Rules for Teachers Circa 1872

Shared by Stephen Fisher

• Teachers each day will fill lamps, clean chimneys.
• Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day's session.
• Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to the individual taste of the pupil.
• Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly.
• After 10 hours in school, the teacher 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 should lay aside from each pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit for his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society.
• Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public halls of gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honest.
• The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week in his pay, providing the Board of Education approves.