Evening star., 1935-12-08
Rigid and Dismal Class Rooms
Of Days of Three RS Vanisl,
PupiIs NOw Go about Tasks With a
Merry VIII, While in the SOS and COS
TOmbEike Silence WGS Teachers Coal.

shown in old Charles Dana GIBSON
girl sketches. BookiSh or more sedate
school marms wore their hair plainly
pulled back from their foreheads,
either in a tight knob behind or
plated and wound about the head.
You will note that we are referring
to teacher as feminine, because half a
century ago, as now, she was in the
majority in this profession. AS long
ago as 1855 we find one of the school
boards expressing itself in this wise:
Our own experience, as well as that
of our predecessors, has convinced us
that females are best adapted by ma
ture and habit to the instruction of
mere primary scholars" The minutes
of the Georgetown School Board
makes this comment nine years later:
THE year 1864 lifted up on high the
ornaments of creation for every
teacher elected was a female. Even
the senior and junior male classes were
put under her control" We in no
wise wish to deprecate this school
boards apparent surrender to femi-
ninity in the profession, but we do
suspect that the traditional economic
differentiation of women'S services
with resultant saving in the school
budget may have been factor. The
minutes naively record, $50 less shall
be allowed to female teachers than has
been customarily paid to teachers of
senior male schools" In other words,
the employment of every female
teacher to position similarly held
by male teacher saved the school
board money.
However, the intelligent young
woman of the era gratefully welcomed
the gateway to economic freedom Of
fered by the class room and concerned
herself very little with the fact that
she was doing the job more economi-
cally than her masculine predecessors.
Drabness VS.. Brightness.
Contrast, if you will, the colorful
slip-on blouses or attractive one piece
dresses which our teachers of today
wear in their class rooms with the
rather drab habilimentS of even so
years ago. High-necked basques, skin
tight and tightly buttoned down the
front, with close-fitting long sleeves,
were certainly not conducive to black
board freedom of movement in the
putting on of written problems or
homework exercises. Teachers skirts,
of course, were long, so long that they
trailed the floor in many instances.
Sometimes they were edged with a
special binding or dust rufae, all too
well named. Often they were trained,
the trains being held during school
sessions with tape or metal hook
fastened coyly on one side, usually just
under the left hip, so that there was
apt to be slightly one-sided effect.
Bustles and hip pads in the hour glass
day of feminine figures were seen in
the school room as elsewhere. When
a spit-ball hurled behind teachers
back lit upon her hustle and was un-
suspectingly carried around during
the rest Of the session, there was sport
indeed.
A newcomer in a certain male gram
mar school with a hoodlum record be-
4l411N 4lLlll OllCC u 4NO W oIdlG
thing on his new woman teacher by
gravely picking up and handing to her
a hip pad which she had dropped in
the course of an energetic session at
a blackboard. Just as gravely, teacher
thanked her would-be heckier for his
service, and then briskly added, II do
not know who has shown the least
judgment, you for leaving your seat
without permission or I for following
a silly fashion. In any event you see
me after school" The expected dis
ruption of the school somehow did not
occur, and years later that youth came
to be the leading citizen of another
city, stood at the bier of that teacher
to do reverence for the right-about
change that she had effected in his
life as a result of that hip-pad Incl
dent.
Aprons Give Way.
About 1900 the shirtwaist and skirt
became the vogue. 1t seemed then
that teacher, in common with the rest
of the feminine professional world,
had at last achieved correct business
attire. Teacher often wore an apron,
too, a ruff1ed white one if she were
dainty and frivolous, black sateen
one if she were Sedate and serious.
1t was Miss Anne Cooling, principal
of the Normal School, now the Will
son Teachers College, who suggested
to its students when the school was
quartered in the Franklin, that some
of the aristocratic parents in this
might place these en-
bryo teachers on a scale with nurse
maids if they continued to wear the
aprons of their own school days, so
their use gradually became obsolete.
Teacher had to cherish her dignity
before the turn of the century. LAS
prim as a school teacher" was no
idle phrase. Her desk, was on
raised platform. From a chair behind
it she called her class to order by
tapping upon bell. Glass recita-
tions were managed by the use of little
packages of cards. Upon these, by
means of cabalistic signs, were kept
the records of the failures and sue
cesses of her pupils in their various
recitationS. Careless teachers who left
these packages on desks often found
them carefully re-arranged as to the
order in which teacher had been CALL
ing upon her pupils. Sometimes they
were even daringly distracted.
Unruly pupils were sent to cloak
rooms in penance for their sins, or
stood up in corners in the class room.
Primary children were sometimes di-
rected to come up to teachers plat
form and go into retreat under
meath in the dark hole of Calcutta
usually occupied only by her waste
basket. Corporal punishment and the
cracking down of ruler upon the
knuckleS of the inSubordinate we're
not uncommon. Compulsory attend
ance was not a factor in our schools
until 1864, with the result that its
efforts at enforcement for some IA
years brought the problem of over
grown pupils into class rooms with
beginners, so that the law of force
was the only one by which teacher
could sometimes hold her o1x,,o