27 July 2007
We now stand three weeks away from classes beginning on Liberty mountain. In just a little less than a month, 12,000 kids will be walking the campus and worshipping Christ. I have the greatest job!
I sent the following to my faculty, to remind them how good we have it. In 1872, a number of School Boards across the country (most notably in Kansas and North Carolina) adopted a set of rules for their teachers. Most schools were one-room school houses, with coal or wood heat, and students from the grades two to eleven.
Read these rules as a reminder of the blessings of God. Times may be tough, but at least no one is getting fired for getting married! I do like the fact that, if you went to church, you could actually double your courting time…
RULES FOR TEACHERS-1872
from North Carolina School Board notebook, transcribed from the original document in the collection of the Smoky Valley Genealogy Society, Salina, Kansas.
On file at the National Association of Independent Schools (http://www.nais.org)
- Teachers each day will fill lamps and clean chimneys.
- Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day’s session.
- Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to the individual taste of the pupils.
- Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly.
- After ten hours in school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the Bible or other good books.
- Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.
- Every teacher should lay aside from each pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society.
- Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty.
- The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week in his pay, providing the Board of Education approves.
