Teaching at the Green

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The work of the Green School was carried out nearly exclusively by women. While male teachers had been active during the mid-19th century particularly during the winter, largely in order to maintain discipline as this was the term typically attended by older farm boys, by the time the new Green school opened in 1872, the role of teacher largely had been assumed by women. Partially this was a result of encouragement from noted educators such as Horace Mann who maintained that “females are incomparably better teachers for young children than males …. Their manners are more mild and gentle, and hence in consonance with the tenderness of childhood.”

Given the variety of ages, the varying academic abilities, and sometimes the sheer number of pupils, the task of the one-room school teacher was challenging at best. The report of the School Committee for the year ending March, 1874, concurred, stating simply “Teachers have a difficult task”. Confronted with a class of students of varying scholastic abilities ranging in age from five to fifteen or older, the Green School teacher was required to tailor her daily lesson plans to the need of each pupil. In 1895, the situation of the suburban school, like the Green, was clearly expressed. “It is divided into nine grades, each grade representing a year’s work for the average pupil. It very seldom happens that all the grades are represented in one school at one time; but enough are always represented to tax the knowledge and skill of the teachers to the utmost to know how best to deal with the different grades in the limited time at their disposal.”

To fill these positions, the town frequently hired young women with little or no teaching experience as more qualified teachers were deterred by the rural location and the low pay. While efforts would eventually be undertaken in Middleborough over the course of the late nineteenth century to improve the one-room schoolteacher’s abilities and accordingly the level of education which was afforded in these buildings, it was a long and slow process.

Middleborough’s first Superintendent of Schools, Charles H. Morss, seems to have held a jaundiced view of ungraded schools like the Green. Writing in 1885, Morss stated:

By an ungraded school, outside of the cities, is generally meant a school in the sparsely settled districts, in which studies are taken up without definite order, whenever it suits the caprice of teacher, parent, or pupil. When a skilled educator was in charge, no harm could come from this lack of system; but, unfortunately, it was rarely that such a person could be obtained for such a school, and the result was too frequently disastrous to the mental growth of the pupils. Studies were taken up without regard to whether the mind of the pupil was fitted to receive them.

Although Morss spoke as early as 1885 of the possibility of grading these one-room schools, this appears not to have been done until 1895 when a formalized curriculum establishing three layers of development was adopted in November of that year.

Ironically, despite the low pay which was provided for the rural schoolteacher, much was expected of them, both as teachers and as role models. Teachers were expected (at least according to the 1876-77 Middleborough School Committee) to be exemplars of “Good breeding, gentleness, courtesy and politeness, as illustrated by the most refined and intellectual, should shine forth in the behavior, habits, conduct , and deportment of every teacher.”

Additionally, increasingly more was expected of teachers beyond the ability to educate the pupils in the basic skills. “We demand much more of a teacher to-day than simply the ability to teach arithmetic, reading, writing, and the other studies of the course. At least the elements of psychology and physiology, and the laws that govern mental and bodily development, are required of the teacher if she is to train the child’s mind, develop power of thought, and promote healthy physical conditions.” The demands of Massachusetts state law appeared even more daunting:

It shall be the duty of all instructors of youth to exert their best endeavors to impress on the minds of children and youth committed to their care and instruction the principles of piety and justice, and a sacred regard to truth; love of their country, humanity, and universal benevolence; sobriety, industry, and frugality; chastity, moderation, and temperance; and those other virtues which are the ornament of human society, and the basis upon which a republican constitution is founded; and it shall be the duty of such instructors to endeavor to lead their pupils, as their ages and capacities will admit, into a clear understanding on the tendency of the above-mentioned virtues, to preserve and perfect a republican constitution, and secure the blessings of liberty, as well as to promote their future happiness, and also to point out to them the evil tendency of the opposite vices.

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