Rules for Teachers in 1872 & 1915: No Drinking, Smoking, or Trips to Barber Shops and Ice Cream Parlors

No one would call this the gold­en era of teach­ing, not with school bud­gets get­ting slashed, state gov­er­nors rou­tine­ly scor­ing polit­i­cal points at teach­ers’ expense, and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment forc­ing schools to teach to the test. But if today’s teach­ers are feel­ing belea­guered, they can always look back to a set of his­tor­i­cal “doc­u­ments” for a lit­tle com­fort. For decades, muse­ums and pub­lish­ers have show­cased two lists — one from 1872 (above) and anoth­er from 1915 (below) — that high­light the rig­or­ous rules and aus­tere moral codes under which teach­ers once taught. You could­n’t drink or smoke. In wom­en’s cas­es, you could­n’t date, mar­ry, or fre­quent ice cream par­lors. And, for men, get­ting a shave in a bar­ber shop was strict­ly ver­boten.

But are these doc­u­ments real?

On its web site, the New Hamp­shire His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety writes that “the sources for these ‘rules’ are unknown; thus we can­not attest to their authenticity—only to their verisimil­i­tude and charm­ing quaint­ness.” “The rules from 1872 have been var­i­ous­ly attrib­uted to an 1872 post­ing in Mon­roe Coun­ty, Iowa; to a one-room school in a small town in Maine; and to an unspec­i­fied Ari­zona school­house. The 1915 rules are attrib­uted to a Sacra­men­to teach­ers’ con­tract and else­where to an unspec­i­fied 1915 mag­a­zine.” Accord­ing to Snopes, the fact-check­ing web site, the 1872 list has been “dis­played in numer­ous muse­ums through­out North Amer­i­ca,” over the past 50 years, “with each exhibitor claim­ing that it orig­i­nat­ed with their coun­ty or school dis­trict.” Heck, the lists even appeared in the ven­er­at­ed Wash­ing­ton Post not so long ago. Here are the rules:

Rules for Teach­ers — 1872

1. Teach­ers will fill the lamps and clean the chim­ney each day.
2. Each teacher will bring a buck­et of water and a scut­tle of coal for the day’s ses­sions.
3. Make your pens care­ful­ly. You may whit­tle nibs to the indi­vid­ual tastes of the pupils.
4. Men teach­ers may take one evening each week for court­ing pur­pos­es, or two evenings a week if they go to church reg­u­lar­ly.
5. After ten hours in school, the teach­ers may spend the remain­ing time read­ing the Bible or oth­er good books.
6. Women teach­ers who mar­ry or engage in improp­er con­duct will be dis­missed.
7. Every teacher should lay aside from each day’s pay a good­ly sum of his earn­ings. He should use his sav­ings dur­ing his retire­ment years so that he will not become a bur­den on soci­ety.
8. Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, vis­its pool halls or pub­lic halls, or gets shaved in a bar­ber shop, will give good rea­sons for peo­ple to sus­pect his worth, inten­tions, and hon­esty.
9. 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.

 Rules for Teach­ers — 1915

1. You will not mar­ry dur­ing the term of your con­tract.
2. You are not to keep com­pa­ny with men.
3. You must be home between the hours of 8 PM and 6 AM unless attend­ing a school func­tion.
4. You may not loi­ter down­town in ice cream stores.
5. You may not trav­el beyond the city lim­its unless you have the per­mis­sion of the chair­man of the board.
6. You may not ride in a car­riage or auto­mo­bile with any man except your father or broth­er.
7. You may not smoke cig­a­rettes.
8. You may not dress in bright col­ors.
9. You may under no cir­cum­stances dye your hair.
10. You must wear at least two pet­ti­coats.
11. Your dress­es may not be any short­er than two inch­es above the ankles.
12. To keep the class­room neat and clean you must sweep the floor at least once a day, scrub the floor at least once a week with hot, soapy water, clean the black­boards at least once a day, and start the fire at 7 AM to have the school warm by 8 AM.

via Peter Kauf­man, mas­ter­mind of the Intel­li­gent Chan­nel on YouTube.

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