Long Island Schools and Schooling

image 1image 2image 3image 4cropped image 1

LONG ISLAND SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLING.

There are still left some old-fashioned country school-houses down through Long Island, especially in Suffolk county.¹ The representative-building is generally a primitive, unpainted edifice with a batten door, fastened by a padlock, and up above, a small chimney peering out at one end of the eaves. The "studies" pursued in this temple, are spelling, reading, writing, and the commoner rules of arithmetic, with now and then geography and "speaking," and perhaps in more ambitious cases, in addition to those branches, a little grammar, surveying, algebra, and even Latin or French.

The compensation of the teachers is certain to be quite moderate—from forty to fifty dollars a quarter and board. Sometimes the teachers "board round": that is they distribute and average themselves among the parents of the children that attend school—they stop two or three days in one place, a week in another, and so on.

This "boarding round" gives a first-rate opportunity for the study of human nature. You go from place to place, from the rich to the poor, from the pious to the atheistical, from homes where there are good kind-hearted women to places where there are—But, good heavens! what were we going to say!

The teachers of these Long Island country schools are often poor young students from some of the colleges or universities, who desire to become future ministers, doctors or lawyers,—but, getting hard up, or fagged out with study, they "take a school," to recuperate, and earn a little cash, for further efforts. They are apt to be eccentric specimens of the masculine race—marked by some of the "isms" or "ologies"—offering quite a puzzle to the plain old farmers and their families. Still there are teachers who become great favorites in the neighborhoods where they teach. The girls fall in love with them; perhaps the teacher makes a rich marriage, and becomes set for life.

But what is to be stated as the grade of education through the country districts of Long Island? Answer—the grade is a low one. The "public money" goes far to the support of the Long Island district School, and to keep up the skeleton of education; but, to confess the truth, it is not much more than a skeleton. The melancholy fact is, that, while so much might easily be done, through the bountiful means provided by the state, for public schools, the whole system of tuition in the country districts is bare and superficial. But beyond that, and nearer home, with regard to city schools, even those in Brooklyn and New York, how much higher the standard ought to be than it is!

There runs through the country regions of Long Island, in our opinion, a marked vein of native common sense and shrewdness. The people are not so quick and showy as city people; but the opinions of the latter are generally surface-opinions, while the man of the country is more apt to be profound, in his way, in what he thinks and says. From all this, we suspect that schools in country districts could easily attain a high average. But the only way to attain this is giving them more of permanency, raising the wages of teachers, arousing more interest in education, and by being more particular about the qualifications of teachers, and not accepting any and every body that offers (so long as he is cheap) as is the case now.

Rightly viewed, there is no subject more interesting to country or city—none that comes closer home to every one, young and old, male and female, married or celibate—than this very subject of improving the public schools—taking them out from the mere half-dead formulas they are now, and elevating them to live schools, forming American youth to become model men and women.

---