School House

“ A school-house should be made a place of the most pleasurable resort and agreeable associations to children, but certain it is that in no wise can this be the case where the great hickory, thong, leather strap, or bridle-rein meets, as it enters the school-house, the child’s eye as it does the eye of the visitor, reminding one, as it must the other, of entering the presence of the old plantation overseer in waiting for his victim. ”

“ That school houses should be utilized at least sixteen hours out of every twenty-four in civic functions when not required for school purposes.
That a detached house is more conducive to proper family life than a suite in an apartment building. ”

“ The schoolhouse is an unoccupied room in a private house, an ancestral, or other temple, or any other available place borrowed for the purpose. Renting a place for a school seems to be almost or quite unknown. The teacher does his own cooking, or if he is unequal to this task, he is assisted by one of his pupils, perhaps his own son, whom he often brings with him, albeit, as already mentioned, there is classical authority against having a son taught by a father. ”

“ In the city where this is written there is, so far as I know, not one private girls' school in a building planned for a school-house. As a consequence, we hear endless complaints from young ladies of overheated or chilly rooms. If the teacher be old, the room is kept too warm; if she be young, and much afoot about her school, the apartment is apt to be cold. ”

“ If you would learn the secret of our nation's greatness, take your stand some winter's morning just before nine o'clock, where you can overlook a circle of some two or three miles' radius, the center being the Old Red School-house. You will see little figures picking their way along the miry roads, or ploughing through the deep drifts, cutting across the fields, all drawing to the school-house, Bub in his wammus and his cowhide boots, his cap with ear-laps, a knitted comforter about his neck, and his hands glowing in scarlet mittens ”

“ Good schools, too, are very necessary. The school-house must be built to keep the boys and girls [p23] comfortable and healthy while at work. Name some of the things needed for a good school building. ”

“ The structure, which is to supersede the old school-house, will have two apartments, airy, spacious, and lofty, one for boys the other for girls, in which they will be instructed by respective teachers, {351}and not crowded together as in the old school-room, under one and the same person; each room will be capable of containing at least 100 children ”

“ Let parents be stirred up in regard to the education of their children, and provide for their welfare. In the early days of the Territory the first house built in every settlement, as a general rule, was a school-house. ”

“ If there is one house in the district more pleasantly located, more comfortably constructed, better warmed, more inviting in its general appearance, and more elevating in its influence than any other, that house should be the school-house.—Michigan School Report, 1847. ”

“ A little bell rang as she looked, and away scampered the children into the red-and-green school-house with the roof that lifted up, so one could see how nicely they sat at their desks with mites of books, or drew on the inch-square blackboards with crumbs of chalk.
"They know their lessons very well, and are as still as mice. We make a great racket at our school, and get bad marks every day. ”

“ In the Mansion are our rooms for the Normal Department, a study room and a laboratory. The primary, intermediate and grammar grades are taught in the new school-house, between the Mansion and Strieby Hall, the upper part of which is a neat and commodious chapel. The primary school is free of tuition as a practice-school for the Normal students, and brings in many little ones from the region round about. ”

“ Two or three churches with stained glass windows and pretty homes of comfort and refinement are often found near the most dilapidated old tumbled-down school house, and a shame it is. But the teacher who is master of the situation and a leader of children, can do much to overcome this. ”

“ In the furtherance of religious education, the disused Collegiate School-house is to be opened as a boarding house for the children of churchmen, feeding a secular High School established by the Government, while it honors and cherishes the first principles of our faith. ”

“ Houses are the corner of a Square of which the Great-House is the Center—First the School-House is forty five feet long, from East to West, & twenty-seven from North to South; It has five well-finished, convenient Rooms, three below stairs, & two above; It is built with Brick a Story & a half high with Dormant Windows; In each Room is a fire; In the large Room below-Stairs we keep our School; the other two Rooms below which are smaller are allowed to Mr Randolph the Clerk; The Room above the School-Room Ben and I live in; & the other Room above Stairs belongs to Harry & Bob. ”

“ For the education of the children of the Company’s servants, a school-house, which we had much pleasure in visiting, has been constructed on an healthy eminence, surrounded by a small court and garden. In the centre there is a room for girls, who, from nine till five, are instructed by a governess in reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, grammar, history, and needlework. ”

“ The kindergarten system is largely used in the school-room when, as is sometimes necessary, children are sent at an earlier age than five, to learn obedience and habits of discipline, which cannot be observed so strictly in the nursery. In the well-to-do English home the school-room is a delightful spot. It is generally one of the best rooms in the house, chosen for its brightness, its pleasant aspect, and general convenience, and in the lives of most children it is a place of real happiness, and to the girls of the family full of delightful memories. ”

“ It seems to me that the very walls of the school-houses ought to throb with pride over the wise young heads and the clear, happy voices that will soon make them echo with sounds of busy work and play. ”

“ Moreover, it has been the experience of schools less favourably situated, like the City schools, that with the growth of the reputation of the School as a place of efficient teaching has come a demand from parents living at a distance for boarding-house accommodation. ”

“ The house is very simply furnished, with cheap and strong things, in plain colors that are easily kept clean; the painting and papering was done by the pupils. The sewing class has made all the curtains and linen for the house, and made furniture by covering boxes, etc. Besides the class work that goes on in the building, the rooms are also used as a social center for the girls of the school. ”

“ There should also be one or more rooms for recitation, apparatus, library, etc., according to the size of the school and the number of scholars to be accommodated.
Every school-room should be so constructed that each scholar may pass to and from his seat without disturbing or in the least incommoding any other one. A house thus arranged will enable the teacher to pass at all times to any part of the room, and to approach each scholar in his seat whenever it may be desirable to do so for purposes of instruction or otherwise. ”

“ If we could effect some alterations in the style of school architecture in our school houses, especially the primary departments, it would be a great desideratum. One of the greatest evils at present existing is the method of constructing the school room and of conducting the same. ”

“ The school for feeble-minded occupies a large apartment house and the children are divided into groups of 10 under the direction of two teachers, each group developing home life in one of the large apartments. ”

“ A systematic arrangement and vigilant inspection of schools, stands intimately connected with their prosperity. They are a complicated concern, and like all such concerns, they require great and systematic attention. School-houses must be provided, fitted up with neatness and convenience, and worthy of the names of temples of science. It is disgraceful to science, to have mean and incommodious school-houses, in the midst of commodious or splendid dwelling-houses. ”

“ The accommodation furnished by the school sections throughout the country has kept pace with the progress of the times. As a rule the school-houses are commodious, and are built with an eye to the health and comfort of the pupils. ”

“ School-houses have been like barns in the country, and like warehouses in the city, rather than fit places for children to exist and study in. The book comprises a series of twenty-three designs for school-buildings, ranging from a loghouse of one room to a brick building of two stories and basement, and containing eight rooms. ”

“ As for the school-houses, they are usually in such a dilapidated condition that the farmers would scarcely care to use them as cattle-sheds. We have visited [Pg 71] schools—and they exist by the score, not to say by the hundred—without either benches or desks, blackboard or maps, and through the roofs of which the rain poured on teachers and pupils. ”

“ In the first place there should never be any waste paper on the basement floor; and in the second place boys should never carry parlor matches, or any other kind of matches, to school. There are more precious lives in a schoolhouse than in any other building in the whole world. ”

“ The Interior.—Within the building there is frequently no adequate equipment in the way of apparatus, supplementary reading, or reference books of any kind. There are no decorations on the walls except such as are put there by mischievous children. The whole situation both inside and out brings upon one a feeling of desolation. Men and women who live in reasonably comfortable homes near by allow the school home of their precious children to remain for years unattractive and uninspiring in every particular. ”

“ The school-room at home is always the school-room, it has no higher moods, no sentiment of its own.
There are diversities of gifts for school and for home education; for impressiveness a large school has the advantage. ”

“ By the side of the models of the school-rooms, where children find school-furniture studied with painstaking care and proportioned to their stature, have been placed the works executed by the school-children themselves of every kind, primary, maternal and professional. These works, in a general way, prove an average aptitude for the industrial arts, and indicate a real taste for beautiful forms. A hall is wholly set apart for the pupils of the special schools. ”

“ I venture to say that three fourths of the graduates of this school, who are now teaching, have no opportunity for daily study and preparation for the duties of the school-room, except that afforded by a seat in the evening in the common sitting-room of the family, surrounded by children that are not always models of behavior, and within sight and hearing of all the petty details of household life. ”

“ In the schoolroom here we sit,
Hour by hour, and day by day;
Can you tell me, schoolmates, why we hither come?
Why not glad, and free and gay,
Spend the time in sport and play,
On the street, or in each happy, happy home? ”

“ The schoolhouse should be used by the community as the place for many of its social acts and performances. Almost every night, and throughout the summer as well as in the winter, the people, young and old, should meet at the school for some sort of social work or play. ”

“ The well-to-do child, less than ten squares away, who bent over her problems in a quiet room, could scarcely appreciate the difficulties attached to homework, when the family lives in three rooms and does everything possible to reduce the bill for kerosene.
There is just one place in every neighborhood where the child can find light, air and quiet—that place is the school. Why then should the school not be open for the child? ”

“ I suppose the craze for competitive examination in every department of life may account for this new development; anyhow, there were the matches to come off—so the bills assured us—in the village schoolroom, of all places, which was thrown open for this purpose, and for dancing, at sunset. Hither, then, I repaired from the vicar’s fields, where the sports had been held, in the wake of a number of rustic couples and toffee-sucking children. The school is a lofty room, fifty feet long, with a smaller class-room as transept at the upper end, along which ran a temporary platform. ”

“ On occasion the children can take up their stools and desktops and go off to work in the halls or garden. Such a room is an ideal classroom, with its hint of the workshop and its lack of rigidity. In the history room in the Emerson School are broad tables that can be used for map-drawing. ”

“ Let each township, or perhaps somewhat smaller area, select a central, well-adapted site and thereon erect a modern, well-equipped school building. But this building must not be just the traditional schoolhouse with its classrooms and rows of desks. For it is to be more than a place where the children will study and recite lessons from books; it is to be the place where all the people of the neighborhood, old and young, will [Pg 33] assemble for entertainment, amusement, and instruction. ”

“ This is the youngest child among the chartered institutions of the Association, but even this child is crying out for enlarged accommodations. The enrollment of the school [318] shows a considerable increase over that of last year, and the promise for the year now opening is still larger. One building only answers all the purposes of this institution. Here are the school rooms, the teachers rooms, the President’s residence and office, dormitories, rooms for industrial training of girls, library, chapel, dining room, kitchen and laundry, and it is not a large building either. ”