Do's and Don'ts

Rules for Teachers and Students
As we visit country schoolhouse museums across the country we often find posted a set of "Rules for Teachers" and some schools post rules for students. The two most common are the Rules for Teachers of 1872 and Rules for Teachers 1915, both of which have questionable provenance and their veracity has been debated elsewhere on the web. (They're still fun to imagine!) 

And those rules for students? When you consult the numerous 19th century books of "manners for children," the lists of do's and don'ts are daunting and cover rules for deportment at the table, in public, with strangers, in hygiene, in church, with their superiors, in school, etc. If you enjoy reading memoirs of teachers in our early country schools, you can imagine the many rules that COULD have been set in stone for students to ponder in idle moments....and maybe they did appear in conspicuous places in the classroom. But, lists of rules could also be so extensive they created more complications than the infractions they were designed to arrest! 

Living history schoolmarms and schoolmasters enjoy talking about the rules of the past that today's students find instructive, strict, or even hilarious...as in the case of, "Only one student at a time may go to the outhouse, or "Students will sweep and dust the room at the close of school." They respond by asking WHY two people would EVER go in an outhouse  together...or they explain that their, "custodian sweeps the room!"

One of the many treasures left by our dear CSAA friend, Susan Webb ("The Traveling Schoolmarm") is a very simple and usable list of Scholar's Rules that can serve any schoolhouse museum if they wish to post a list of proper schoolhouse behaviors. We share it here...click on the image for a printable PDF.

---

​If you need more ideas for your list, check out this set of Instructions and Manners for Your School! This one is courtesy of the District #1 Schoolhouse in Nashua, NH from their "Standard Second Reader," a compilation of 19th century stories and poems printed in a reproduction reader.

​Click in the image at left for a printable PDF.

---