Job description for District 97 teacher: Clean chimneys. Fill lamps. Whittle pencils for students.
Such requirements might make a teacher choose an entirely new profession. But were these actual requirements for the one-room schoolhouse teacher back in the 1800s? These so-call teacher rules lists have been floating around the internet for years and have even made their way into the files of some school districts.
Oak Park’s District 97 has had the infamous “Rules for Teachers 1872” in its old files for some time, said Chris Jasculca, the district’s policy, planning and communications director, who emailed over a copy recently to Wednesday Journal.
There’s no name, school district or any kind of identifier one the one-page document, just the title and nine rules to follow, the first being to take care of those chimneys and lamps every day. Rule No. 2 informs teachers to bring a “bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day’s session.”
Another rule gives male teachers the opportunity for “courting purposes” one evening a week, or two evenings if they’re regularly churchgoers. Female teachers, however, don’t fare as well in the romance department. Rule No. 6 informs them they’ll be fired if they marry or engage in “unseemly conduct.” The items are so tongue-in-cheek in their description, no wonder people think this and other such lists are hoaxes or manufactured under legends.
These lists sometimes show up as a humorous item on some school districts’ sites. Over at D97, Jasculca said they’re not sure if their list was for Oak Park schools only or schools in general, but he thought finding out about its origin might make for an interesting news story. We thought so too at the Journal and contacted the Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest for help.
Beth Loch, the society’s administrative assistant, was unfamiliar with the rules list and said she’d do some digging.
She came across a website stating that the rules originated in a schoolhouse in Augustine, Fla., but she’s unsure of the site’s credibility. She found nothing in Oak Park’s archives regarding such lists. Loch did find the list posted on Wisconsin’s Portage County Historical Society website. Its school archive has the 1872 list and another from 1915 concerning “Teacher Conduct.”
A couple of items on the 1915 one include teachers not being able to marry during the school term and female teachers prohibited from being in the company of men. And one rule requires at least two petticoats worn by teachers, presumably for females though no gender was specified.
Loch said there was no direct link to Oak Park concerning the list and concludes that it’s “some kind of urban myth-type document used in many forms throughout the years.”
