Interior of One-room School
Boy's Farm Chores
Printer's Devil 
Frontier Education
McGuffey’s Readers
School BookBefore the Formal Education System
Educating the young is a vital
part of every culture. Whether in schools or at home or in vocational activities,
the older generation trains children to survive and to produce the goods and
services a society needs. How children are educated reflects the needs of
the surroundings in which they live. In early Iowa children learned both at
home and at nearby schools.
In the early 1800s when pioneers were moving into Iowa and building houses and farms, women and men had very well defined work roles. Women worked in the home and garden while men worked in the barn and in the field. Boys learned how to farm and take care of livestock from their fathers. Girls learned how to manage the home by learning to cook large meals, make clothing, tend the sick and take care of a garden by working with their mothers. The large gardens produced food for the family. Most
families relied on large flocks of chickens to supply meat and eggs. While
the distribution of tasks normally followed gender lines, boys and girls,
men and women often had to learn new tasks in the necessities of frontier
living.
As the economy developed, more work opportunities became available to boys and men, but not for women. For the most part only single women worked outside the home and when they did, few occupations were available to them. Before the Civil War most school teachers were male. But in the latter part of the 19th century, single women began taking teaching positions in Iowa's many one-room schools.
Learning a Trade
To learn a craft, trade or profession,
a boy often worked with a skilled adult. To become a blacksmith, for example,
a boy would work in a blacksmith shop, observing the master smith and performing
simple tasks. Most doctors and lawyers learned their trades by studying in
the offices of practicing doctors and lawyers. There were few law schools
or medical schools anywhere in the nation to provide formal instruction. “Reading
law” was the common way to become a lawyer. An older youth would do
simple clerical tasks in a law office in exchange for the opportunity to read
law books in the lawyer’s library and to watch him in court. When the
young man had studied enough, he went before a judge who asked him questions
about the law and legal procedure. If he demonstrated his competence, the
judge would certify him as a member of the bar and he had the right to practice
law in the courts.
Even on the Iowa frontier, however, parents wanted their children to learn
at least how to read, write and do basic arithmetic. Especially for families
from a Protestant religious background, reading the Bible was a vital part
of religious training. In addition, American political leaders promoted education
as an essential part of democracy. Voters needed to keep themselves informed
about public events by reading newspapers, attending lectures and participating
in public discussions. Democracy could not survive if voters were ignorant.
Laws Supported Schools
Therefore, in one of its earliest
pieces of legislation, Congress passed a law providing financial support for
public education. The Land Ordinance of 1785 required western lands to be
surveyed before they could be sold to private buyers. The survey lines created
townships six miles on each side. Of the thirty-six sections (each section
equals one square mile) in each township, Section 16 was designated to support
local schools. The money from the sale of Section 16 would be given to local
officials to build a school or pay a teacher, and it was the original intention
that the schools would be open to all children in the area.
However, most early schools depended upon the financial support of the families
of the students attending. Families built and maintained the schools, furnished
fuel for a stove or fireplace, built benches or desks and hired the teacher.
Berryman Jennings was Iowa’s first known schoolteacher. He taught in
a log cabin schoolhouse in Lee County in 1830 in southeast Iowa even before
Iowa became a territory. Teachers rarely stayed at one school for more than
a year or two. The pay was very low and teaching conditions were difficult.
Iowa’s early settlers included many immigrants. Germany supplied the
most immigrants in 19th-century Iowa, followed by Ireland. Immigrants often
formed their own communities or neighborhoods and continued to speak their
native language. In these cases, schools were usually taught in the native
language of the students.
Attendance Not Required
Early schools taught reading, writing,
spelling, arithmetic, penmanship and geography. Learning by rote (memorization)
was the standard mode of instruction. Schools used whatever textbooks local
families possessed and the books were handed down from older to younger students
and from one family to another. There were no laws requiring children to attend
school. Farm families often kept their boys home to help with planting and
harvest times. They attended school in the winter and worked on their studies
at their own pace.
Most parents desired at least a basic education for their children. As Iowa’s
population increased, the state legislature passed laws to provide more support
for a broad system of public education. No longer would it be just parents
who paid the salaries of teachers and maintained school buildings. In Iowa
as well as throughout the United States, there was a commitment to free education
for all.
