Many Mainers of our times have strong opinions about public education.

It’s usually the easiest topic to start a conversation —or argument — about than almost any other topic. That may be because it’s one of the very few experiences everyone has in common. Whether we went through public, private or home school, we all went through the different, sequential stages of learning at about the same ages as our peers. We all remember school, but “remember” some of it very differently and with markedly different emotions than others.

These little tears in the tapestry of time and the human brain are potentially flammable in conversation. However, when we factor in the intervening time’s issues of taxes and politics, what’s left is almost certainly an inferno.

Back in 1901, some educational dispute led to what seems to have been a roaring blaze, at least in one person’s mind. He wrote a letter to the editor of the Norway Advertiser, who published it in the issue April 12, 1901. Please understand that the letter seems to have been written with a pen dipped in sarcasm.

Agriculture in Common Schools

Mr. Editor – I was surprised and saddened by seeing in your paper of recent date a plea for the introduction of matters relating to agriculture into our common country schools. It seems that the people over there in the lea of the White Mountains might escape the influence which would cause such wild dreams. Who and what are our schools maintained for anyway? For an answer to this don’t go back to the “fundamental principle” nor to the schemes of the early settlers who believed that the many were as much importance as the few. That idea is up on the shelf with the rubbish of our national constitution which boasts of equality, free institutions the elevation of the masses and the resultant fruits that have appeared in the talk about the dignity of labor, the intelligence of the farming community, etc. To decide what the schools are for we must look to the practice rather than to the theory of the system. Looking at it in this light we shall see that the law is the same as with the seedlings of the forest; the majority must die and decay for the advancement of the few. The children must all be instructed and drilled in matters they do not comprehend, have no interest in and which but few of them will ever have any use for, in order that a few may be fitted for higher courses in academies and colleges. The whole system is a preparation for a college course, and the few who are able to take such a course are the wheat; the object of all this outlay, while those who drop out and engage in manual labor are simply the chaff and straw, the unavoidable waste of doing business on a large scale.

Our ancestors had a method of “toughening” colts, which consisted of allowing them to run in an open shed and eat poor hay all winter, and lie in their own filth without bedding. And the rulers of our school system have at last recognized the wisdom of that method and are following a similar one in the process of “disciplining” the minds of children.

Courses of study are arranged by the supervisors (usually young doctors and lawyers who know little of the difference in mental capacity and are too young to admit that they ever were children), and all must take this dose as it is given out, and a large part of them become so wearied and worn out in puzzling over problems in mathematics and lessons in grammar, history and other of the “higher” branches that they have the same feelings at the sight of textbooks on those subjects as they would on approaching a pesthouse. They are disabled or disqualified for any investigation or study on the matters which will come before them in the future employments, and must accept the situation and content themselves to be thrown away with the chaff and foul seed which have accumulated while producing a few intellectual giants who can live on the credulity or the misfortune of the masses.

These must go back to the soil and the shop and work by guess as did their ancestors, without any special preparation or the inclination to study and prepare themselves. They must begin at the bottom and work downward. The beauty of this system is that it enables a few to remain on top by forcing others down, and saves them the labor of climbing for their positions.

You surely would not want the common school to go ahead of the great “Agricultural colleges” which teach law, medicine, high mathematics, ancient, French and English literature French drama and German plays! The drunken man who declared that he was “a bigger man than old (General) Grant never got much higher, and the common school will soon become unpopular if it attempts to correct the errors of higher institutions.

—    O.H. Leavitt, Manchester, N.H.

Now, before sending letters, modern readers will recall that we endeavor to reproduce the old-school grammar and word usage as accurately as possible, exactly at it appeared at the time. Insertions in parentheses are there to clarify terms that might not otherwise make sense to many readers.

Having reminded our 21st century readers of that, we also want to point out that Leavitt, the letter writer’s use of sarcasm is not often used these days in public documents. That is, what he is saying is not what it at first appears.

We can’t be entirely sure what specific public issue he is concerned about, but the idea of there being such a study as
“agricultural science” was fairly unfamiliar back then. Although since shortly after the Civil War the federal government had been giving states government land to sell. The resulting money was to be used to establish agricultural colleges or offer courses in it at existing schools. These were referred to as “land grant colleges.” Naturally, the availability of schools of advanced study led to some demand for public schools to include it in their curriculums.

In other news that week, the paper reported:

Effie Briggs Pembroke and three children arrived at her parental home, W.H. Briggs’ Friday, April 5^th. Mr. Pembroke is suffering from a severe attack of typhoid pneumonia in Lewiston Central Hospital.

Readers of the time would have understood that the kiddies’ father was dying of a combination of two lethal diseases at once. In those days, it was a death sentence.

More cheery news of yesteryear will be here next week.