Aug 28 2006
Teachers behavioural code. Ohio 1872
- Teachers each day will fill lamps, clean chimneys
- Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and scuttle of coal for the days session.
- Make your pens carefully, you may whittle nibs to the individual taste of each pupil.
- Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly.
- After ten hours in school, teachers may use the remaining time reading the bible or other good books.
- Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.
- Every teacher should lay aside from each pay a goodly sum of their earnings for his benefit during declining years so he will not become a burden on society.
- Any teachers who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty.
- The teacher who performs his labour faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of 25 cents per week in his pay providing the board of education approves.
From a set of rules published on the wall of Granny Joe’s, Vermilion, Ohio:
Teachers behavioural code. Ohio 1872
Getting shaved in a barber shop is reason to suspect someone’s worth, intention, integrity and honesty?! What’s he purportedly getting shaved?