Ryerson Memorial Volume / Prepared on the occasion of the unveiling of the Ryerson statute in the grounds of the Education department on the Queen's birthday, 1889

by J. George Hodgins

The Old Log School House and Its Belongings.

In connection with the realistic picture of education in the County of Oxford, in 1847-49, sketched by the Rev. W. H. Landon, District Superintendent, the following dual pictures of "The Old Log School" and "The Pioneer Teachers," taken from the Toronto Globe of 1887, will be found to be highly interesting. The pictures are graphically drawn by a teacher, and from a teacher's standpoint. Speaking of the representative teacher of a former generation recalling the past, he said:—

The old days come up vividly before him, when he first engaged in the work in some country district, engaging to devote to it the best energies of body and mind, for, it may be, some such munificent salary as eight or ten dollars a month, said salary to be supplemented by the saving in expense effected through the process formerly so much in vogue of boarding around. How well he remembers the old log school house, with its low ceiling on which a tall man could easily lay his hand; the narrow apertures, fitted with a few panes of 7×9 glass which served for windows; the floor of unplaned boards, whose crevices were either compactly filled with accumulations of dust and litter characteristic of the school room, or worse still, yawning to swallow up pen-knife and slate pencil as they would ever and anon drop from the fingers of some luckless wight, started from the half slumber into which the drowsy monotony of the ill-ventilated school room had beguiled him, by the stentorian tones, or possibly the vigorous cuffs, of the master of ceremonies. Very distinctly the vision of such a school room of the old type, though at a date much less than fifty years ago, rises before the writer as memory carries him back to the little Canadian hamlet in which his boyhood was passed. The desks, so as far any were provided, consisted of a wide shelf fixed at a pretty sharp angle against the wall, and extending all around the room, with an intermission only at the narrow space occupied by the door. This primitive arrangement was sometimes supplemented with a long, flat table composed of three or four loose planks in the rough, supported by wooden benches or horses placed transversely beneath. The seats were of planks or slabs, likewise unsmoothed, constructed by driving rudely hewn legs into holes bored with a large augur, at a suitable angle, in the lower surface of the plank or slab. These legs often projected an inch or so above the surface of the seat. It could not be said of these rude structures as in Cowper's "Evolution of the sofa," that "the slippery seat betrayed the sliding part that pressed it," for between the projecting legs and the innumerable "splinters" the unhappy occupant was in much greater danger of being impaled and pinned fast than of slipping off. Perhaps it was better so, for in view of the great height usually given them, the fall, for a small child, while it would most surely have been a "laughing matter," might yet have proved a serious one.... It was certainly a strange and cruel infatuation which constrained our grandfathers to think that the proper position for a boy or girl at school was upon a narrow perch, without back or arm support of any kind, and with the feet dangling some six or eight inches above the floor.

The picture of the old school bench would not be accurate without reference to the warping of the plank which was pretty sure soon to take place, with the result of raising one or other of the diagonal legs an inch or two from the floor, thus converting the seat, when filled with its living, aching load, into a tilting board, provocation of many a trick from the omnipresent mischievous boy of the school, and resulting in many a blow from the palm or cane of the irate master, which would, of course, generally descend upon innocent ears or shoulders.

What a picture did the wooden desks and walls of those old-time school houses present, worn smooth with the elbows, smeared with the jackets, variegated with the ink, carved with the jack-knives and stained with the tears of boisterous and blubbering boys and rosy-cheeked, hoydenish or timid girls. What burlesque, too, upon every intelligent idea of education were the processes carried on in them. From nine o'clock to twelve, and from one till four, six long hours, as marked by the sun's shadow on the rude dial marked out on the windowsill, did the work go on.

Murray's Reader, and in the most ambitious districts his Grammar, Walker's Dictionary, Walkingame's Arithmetic, Goldsmith's Geography and somebody's spelling-book, with slate and pencil, a scanty supply of paper and ink, and pen shaped with a keen pen-knife from a quill picked up from the wayside or plucked ruthlessly from the wing of some reluctant "squawking" goose, would complete the scholar's outfit. It is the hour for preparation of the reading lesson. The school room resounds with the loud hum of a score or two of boys and girls all "studying aloud" with a most distracting din, and all the heads and bodies swaying constantly and simultaneously back and forth as an accompaniment to the voice. This voice in the case of perhaps a majority would be modulated without the slightest relation to the contents of the printed page, while the thoughts of the ostentatiously industrious student would be busy with some projected game or trick for the coming recess. And yet how often would the Scotch school master's eye gleam with pride and pleasure when he had, by dint of persuasion or threat, succeeded in getting every boy and girl engaged in the horrible, monotonous chant.

Then the recitation—what a scene of confusion and stripes, tears and bellowings. Perhaps it was the column of spellings. A few, fitted by nature with memories adapted for that kind of work, would make their way in triumph to the head of the long semicircular class. But woe, woe to the dullards and the dunces, under a regime whose penalty for missing a word a foot and a half long would be, very likely, two or three strokes on the tingling fingers or aching palm with the pitiless hardwood ferule, this process being occasionally varied as some noisy or idling youngster was called up from a back seat to be visited with a still sterner chastisement for some trifling misdemeanor.... The writer can recall instances and experiences innumerable, the infliction being sometimes accompanied with a caution to tell no tales at home under pain of a worse infliction. In his own case he well remembers the wrath of his father, who would have thought it wrong and encouraging insubordination to listen to any complaints against the master, when, on occasion of the victim of a tendency to juvenile pranks being dangerously ill with scarlet fever, and that father being called on by the doctor to annoint his back with some soothing lotion, he found said back striped and checked with a network of "black and blue." It is needless to add that at this point ended both the writer's experience under that schoolmaster and the schoolmaster's term of engagement in that district.

As a significant comment upon the moral effects of the regime of the schoolmasters of the old school the writer may add that one of his most vivid memories of the mental status produced by the school training referred to is that of an intense longing for the day when he should be large enough to repay that old schoolmaster in his own coin. That day came. The flagellated boy, transformed into a tolerably lusty youth, found himself face to face with his quondam tormenter. But his long cherished wrath speedily gave place to pity for the decrepit, friendless and lonely old bachelor, whose days were drawing to a close, with no loving hand of wife or daughter to minister to their feebleness.