Imagine that you're going to school with Anne Shirley and her friends somewhere in rural Prince Edward Island in the 1870s or 1880s. What would your day be like?

What Do You Wear?

Well, let's start with getting dressed to go to school. You probably don't have much choice of clothes. If you're a girl, you might have two dresses, like Anne does in the book, with a pinafore (a sleeveless apron) to go on top. Underneath, you'll be wearing a vest, drawers (underwear), and probably a petticoat. If you're a boy, you're probably going to pull on knickers (knee-length pants that buckle at the knee) and a shirt, though older boys got to wear full-length trousers. In the winter, you'll wear long underwear and long stockings (yes, the boys, too) to stay warm. Girls have long hair, so it has to be combed and braided before breakfast.

There isn't any running water, so to wash, you'll pour water from a pitcher or bucket into a basin. (If it's winter, you might have to break the ice first.) Your mother will cook breakfast on a woodstove, and if it's winter and dark in the morning, the house will be lit with lamps or candles.

How Do You Get There?

Cars aren't invented yet, so you have to walk to school. If you're lucky, you live close by; if you don't, you might have to walk up to two or two-and-a-half miles to get to the schoolhouse. But if your friends live near, you can have a wonderful time exploring the woods and fields, or throwing snowballs and jumping in mud puddles. You'll have your lunch with you in a pail or basket - maybe plain bread and butter, and perhaps a treat like raspberry tarts. You might also have a bottle of milk.

It's a long, cold walk in the wintertime, too long for smaller children sometimes.

How Often Do You Go?

By law, you only have to go to school for twelve weeks of the year, or about three months. (If you don't, your parents will be fined $20. That was a lot of money back then!) That doesn't mean you can stay at home and have fun. If you do stay home, it probably means that your father needs you on the farm to help with chores, or your mother needs you to help with the washing or mind your younger brothers or sisters. Even in 1916, Wesley Turner, a real-life teenager growing up in PEI, stayed home from school a lot to work -- but he liked it.

What's the School Like?

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

At nine o'clock, your teacher rings a hand-bell to tell you it's time to start lessons. You sit down at the deak - 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, 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.

What Are Classes Like?

All the grades from one through nine or ten share the same teacher and the same room, so you have to learn to concentrate, because another class is usually up reciting their lessons to the teacher. Your teacher sets you a lesson to learn - so many pages of geography or history to memorize, so many sums to work out in arithmetic, so many words to learn to spell, a certain length of compsotion (writing). When your class is called, you go to the front, stand before the teacher, and answer the questions in turn. If you answer the most questions correctly, you're "head of the class." Reading, writing and arithmetic are the main subjects, but you aren't taught to "discover" or "question" unless your teacher is exceptionally good (or original). Instead, you learn by "rote," or by memorizing. You also take geography, history, grammar, agriculture, and other subjects. If you're thirteen and old enough to study for the "entrance" exam to high school, you might have to stay after school to study extra subjects like algebra, Latin and French.

The teacher's so busy that the older students often help the younger ones by hearing them read or spell. It's an honour to be chosen. Students didn't have to be the same age to be in the same grade or even in the same subject. They progressed through a set of readers, and depending on their abilities, were placed with other children with the same abilities. You didn't necessarily get promoted to the next grade at the end of the year, either. If you did well, you would just move up to the next class or the next reader at any time during the school year.

If you're done your lessons (or don't feel like doing them), you can get up to mischief. You might draw pictures on your slate or talk to your seatmate or try (as one of Anne's classmates did) driving a team of crickets up the aisle. A good teacher will notice and might keep you in after school - or give you the strap.

Having Fun

Lunchtime, just like today, can be great! You hurry through your lunch, then rush outside to play on fine days. Girls might read books out loud or play house in the trees, and the boys might climb trees or pick gum from the spruces. Or the whole school might play a game, like ball or tug-or-war. It's like one big family, though, because everyone, big and small, gets to play. The teacher might even join you!

At four o'clock (if you've behaved yourself), school is dismissed, and you and your friends can run off home with the books you need, your slate, and your empty lunch pail or basket. School's out for the day - but if you live far away, you still have that two mile walk home.