Contemplating teacher responsibilities from years past

As educators get ready for the start of another school year, they are undoubtedly contemplating their professional responsibilities. So this seems like an opportune time to read the list of responsibilities for teachers published by the National Popular Education Board in 1872. It’s amusing to see how much things have changed in the last 140 years. Here’s the list:

• Teachers each day will fill lamps and 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 pupils.
• Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings each week if they go to church regularly.
• After ten hours in school, teachers 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 during 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, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity, and honesty.
• The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of 25 cents per week in his pay, providing the Board of Education approves.

Awesome.