We are all aware of Max and Kate Schramm’s involvement in teaching during the mid to late 19th Century in church, private and public schools.
The rules relating to the teachers of that time are interesting compared to the present day conditions in schools.
The following rules dated 1872 are on the door of the old one room school house which still stands in Warrnambool, Victoria:
- Teachers each day will fill lamps, and clean chimneys
- Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and scuttle of coal for the day’s session
- Make your pens carefully, you may whittle nibs to the individual taste of the pupils
- Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they attend church regularly
- After ten hours in school the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the bible or other good books
- Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed
- Every teacher shall lay aside from each pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society
- Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequent 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 two shillings and five pence per week in his pay, providing the board of education approves.
Source: 2017-06 DTHS Newsletter
On its web site, the New Hampshire Historical Society writes that “the sources for these ‘rules’ are unknown; thus we cannot attest to their authenticity—only to their verisimilitude and charming quaintness.” “The rules from 1872 have been variously attributed to an 1872 posting in Monroe County, Iowa; to a one-room school in a small town in Maine; and to an unspecified Arizona schoolhouse. The 1915 rules are attributed to a Sacramento teachers’ contract and elsewhere to an unspecified 1915 magazine.” According to Snopes, the fact-checking web site, the 1872 list has been “displayed in numerous museums throughout North America,” over the past 50 years, “with each exhibitor claiming that it originated with their county or school district.” Heck, the lists even appeared in the venerated Washington Post not so long ago.
Source: Rules for Teachers in 1872 & 1915: No Drinking, Smoking, or Trips to Barber Shops and Ice Cream Parlors | Open Culture Dec2025
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