In your one-room 19th-century schoolhouse, 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 composition (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 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.

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?

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.

My Mother, The Teacher

I always thought one-room schoolhouses disappeared in about 1920. Until, that is, I was working on this project and happened to ask my mother if she knew anything about one-room schools.

“Oh my goodness, yes,” she exclaimed. “Why, I taught in one!”

“You did WHAT?” I asked. “Where? When? How old were you?”

“Oh, I was eighteen,” she said. “I finished high school and they were so short of teachers in Ontario – this would have been around 1951 – that I took a summer course and earned a certificate. I was really lucky, too – I sang in the choir at church, and someone from one of the schools heard me sing a solo. They wanted someone who could teach the children music and games as well as the subjects, so I got hired.”

“The first year, I had fourteen students in seven grades. The second year, we had so many students they had to hire another teacher, and I taught four grades in the morning, then we all went home, and the other teacher taught the other four grades in the afternoon.”

My own mother, a teacher in a one-room school for two years! But I was in for more shocks.....

High school wasn’t free in the 19th century, and you had to pass an entrance exam to get in. To pass the examination for Prince of Wales College, for instance, you had to study extra subjects like Latin, algebra and French. If you did manage to pass – the entrance exam results were published in the paper, so everyone knew how you’d done – you could earn a teacher’s certificate. A second-class certificate took a year of study; a first-class certificate at least two years. But if you passed and could get a school, you had an independent income.

As a teacher, you had great responsibilities. Not only did you have to manage nine or ten grades in the same room and the full range of subjects, but you had to plan one of the most important social events of the year: the Christmas concert. All students had to sing or recite or act in dialogues (short plays); the school had to be decorated; and the teacher was judged on the quality of the concert. Many teachers and students have fond memories of great concerts and greater catastrophes.