Discipline

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School Committees at the time that the Green School was built in 1871 anticipated that schools would be run in an orderly manner. “The manners of the school room should be those of the well regulated and cultivated home.” Teachers were expected to lead by example and set a high tone within the building. Everything from discourtesy to poor posture was to be corrected and pupils to be reprimanded for vulgarity, meanness, sloppiness and a host of other sins as seen in the eyes of the teacher. “Teachers shall rebuke every known instance of profanity, and suppress, so far as possible, all coarseness, and rudeness, and unkindness in their pupils’ treatment of one another, whether in school-hours, or by the way; and the use of tobacco by any pupil shall be especially discountenanced.”

Teachers were charged with acting in the manner “of a kind, judicious parent” towards students, and were urged to avoid corporal punishment. In the event the teacher deemed that such harsh punishment was warranted, they were required to record it in a register along with the reason for inflicting it. While the method of administering such treatment was not prescribed, the school committee’s regulations did set boundaries: “No teacher will be justified in inflicting any punishment upon the head of any pupil, either with the rod, rule, or hand.”

In 1881, the School Committee reported what it viewed as an alarming decline in respectfulness among children of the era.

Fifty years ago, children were not only instructed, but were made to treat their superiors with great respect, and all with courtesy. When they met the clergyman or the Squire, they would take off their caps and stand with uncovered heads while he passed. Now, many times when one passes a wayside schoolhouse, he is glad to make extra speed to get out of the way of flying missiles, hurled about his head, and beyond the sound of the yells and whoops of the froward striplings. While we do not care to have the children of the present day under such rigid surveillance, yet we do ask, that they may be so instructed, as not to throw stones at the school house after dismissal, in our presence, or cast a stone after us as we drive away.

The committee, however, may have been regarding the past with a somewhat rose-colored perspective as not all scholars of an earlier generation had been as deferential as the 1881 group believed. In 1851, the School Committee had been critical of Deborah Gisby, the teacher of the Green for what was an apparent inability to always retain order. “Miss G. succeeds in teaching better than governing where there are scholars that need more than common restraint.”

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