The Pioneer Teachers, and the Trials of "Boarding Round."
The writer of the foregoing paper pictured roughly the rural Canadian school of forty or fifty years ago. It may not be without interest to have that picture supplemented with a glimpse of rural Canadian life as seen by the schoolmaster of the period. The "boarding 'round" system afforded him excellent facilities for observation. The venerable custom of boarding round died, no doubt, a good many years ago, so far as Canada is concerned.... But thirty or forty years ago it was, in some parts of Canada at least, almost a matter of course that the teacher should "board 'round." When a school became vacant or a new and ambitious settlement had reached the pitch of development at which a school was deemed a necessary sequent to the carpenter's shop, the smithy and the shoemaker's shanty, one of the first steps was, of course, to pitch upon a suitable candidate for the scanty honors and still more scanty emoluments of the village pedagogue. Probably some influential member of the community had a son or a daughter in the teens, who was thought pretty well up in "the three R's." If so, it would usually be deemed quite unnecessary to look farther. In fact it would, in such a case, be useless for an outsider to contest the constituency. It never entered the unsophisticated heads of the trustees to invite competition by advertising for candidates "to state salary expected." This method of putting up professional talent in a kind of Dutch auction is an evolution of our present "best educational system on earth." Our grandfathers went about the business in a different way. The coming teacher being fixed upon, the next step was for the candidate himself, or some interested relative or friend on his behalf, to circulate a subscription sheet. A form of heading would be prepared somewhat in the following style:—"We, the undersigned residents of Smithton District, being desirous of securing the services of Henry Schoolman as teacher of the district school, hereby agree to engage the services of said H. S. for the period of six months, and to pay him at the rate of £1 2s 6d for each and every pupil we hereunto subscribe or send to said school. We further agree to supply the teacher with board in proportion to our several subscriptions; also to furnish our proportions of wood for the use of said school. Signed, etc."
The average juvenile Canadian made, no doubt, a much more merciful, and often much more efficient, teacher than the ex-soldier, or broken-down tradesman from the Old Country. One of the first duties of the newly-fledged teacher would be to go carefully over his treasured list of subscribers and ascertain, by a careful arithmetical calculation, the exact number of weeks and days for which he was entitled to board and lodging at the house of each of his respective patrons. The next step would be to find out, by personal or written enquiries, at what time it would be most convenient for each family to open its doors to him. This process, and the subsequent installation in each home would, it may well be imagined, be trying ordeals to the young and bashful pedagogue.... The receptions accorded the poor itinerant would be, of course, as various as the feelings, dispositions and circumstances of the householders, or, more strictly speaking, of the presiding divinities of the parlor and the kitchen, especially the kitchen. In many cases he would quickly feel at home. The welcome would be cordial, the hospitality ungrudging, the companionship agreeable. In such cases the bashful beginner would soon be able to shake off the intolerably humiliating dread of being regarded as an intruder, an interloper, or half-mendicant. But in numerous instances, as may readily be conceived, the situation would be most galling to a sensitive nature. The over-worked, perpetually tired and fretful mistress of the house would receive him with an ill-concealed frown or an involuntary sigh. To her he represented just so much addition, for so long a time, to her hourly toils and cares, already too heavy to be borne.
Unwashed specimens of "the heritage of the poor" would swarm in every corner. The fear and awe which secured him immunity for a time would soon wear away, and as they were replaced with the familiarity that breeds contempt, he would be exposed to all manner of well-meant advances and indignities. The scorn at the roughly-spread supper table would be a scramble, and the twilight hour, which, if he happened to have a spice of romance in his composition, he would fain have consecrated to quiet thought or fancy, would be made hideous by a juvenile pandemonium, as amidst stripes and cuffs and yells and tears the unruly flock would finally be got to bed. These, of course, were the ill-regulated householders, but they exist.
Well does the writer remember some personal experiences in this delightful phase of the professional life of an earlier day—not much more than half a semi-centennial distant. The old, dingy farmhouse, the bare floors, the hard seats, the utter absence of everything in the shape of books or other literature, the teeming olive branches at every age and stage of development, the little "spare" bedroom, whose sole furnishings consisted of the bed and bedding, on whose hard floor he reclined for lack of chair and table evening after evening for hours after he was supposed to be in bed, reading by the feeble rays of a tallow candle the ponderous volumes of Dr. Dick's philosophies, which had been kindly loaned him by a friend, and which were devoured with an eagerness begotten of a genuine hunger, though out of all proportion to the literary merits of the works.