Schooling in an Earlier Era: Some Reminiscences and Convictions

Abstract

This article should be childishly simple because it is a record of my own
experience as a boy and as a pupil during the early part of the present
century, with occasional indications of how that experience fitted in with
educational thought and conditions at the time.
From age three to seven I was taught at home to tell the time and to
play dominoes, checkers, and a variety of card games-including euchre,
cassino, thirty on the king, poker, and whist. These were obviously
useful accomplishments because we lived with grandparents, an aunt, and
two uncles-all maternal. My aunt seemed to rely on me to get her off
to work on time, and I was constantly in demand to make a fourth at
cards, except on Sundays, when only dominoes and checkers were allowed.
Another advantage was that I was well prepared for learning to read
at school without having interest killed by pre-knowledge of what the
school would teach. Although the school had a kindergarten, I was not
sent to it. My Anglican parents were probably aware of concern expressed
in the Toronto synod in 1900 about heretical religious views of Froebel,
but that would not have deterred them. Certainly it was not because kindergartens
were "progressive:" my father and mother were extremely "permissive"
even if unaware of any such labels. My only recollection is that
they saw no reason for rushing things by sending a child to be cooped up
in school earlier than need be. Of course, no one in our house had r eceived
more than an elementary education except my relatively young
aunt, who had a year or two in fifth book, but my parents set no upper
limits on the length of formal education-quite the contrary.