The 19th-century schoolhouse looked very different from the one you probably go to. For one thing, the playground was just a field or clearing. For another, the schoolhouse only had one room that held about 30 students comfortably; the whole school was about the same size as one of today's classrooms. It was probably a wooden building, simply built, with a small gable. No running water meant that the toilets were outhouses behind the school. No electricity meant no refrigerator to put your milk in to keep cool in the summer, so like Anne Shirley and her friends, you had to put it in the brook to stay fresh.

If you're a 19th century student, then at nine o'clock, your teacher rings a hand-bell to tell you it's time to start lessons. You sit down at the desk - which you have to share with another student - put down your slate (a small, portable, washable blackboard) and books, make sure your pen is filled from the inkwell in your desk, and pay attention to the teacher. There are no electric lights, so the only light comes from the windows, or perhaps from an oil or kerosene lamp in the winter. Heat comes from a wood or coal stove, and if it won't light on a stormy winter day, then school is closed for the day. The school doesn't have much equipment: a blackboard (boards pained black) on the wall, perhaps a map or two, and of course, the strap. If you don't behave, the teacher may punish you by hitting you with it.

Paper's expensive and so is ink, so you use your slate and slate pencil to do exercises that can be wiped off later with a damp rag. If you're a bit bored, you might carve your initials on the desktop, as generations of students have before you.

Tryon Consolidated School. Schoolmaster Fred Bell is in the center of the photo.
PARO, Acc 2667/135