On-the-job training ruled. Learning was all about apprenticeships back then, according to Paula Fass, a history professor at UC- Berkeley. Blacksmiths, brewers, printers and other tradesmen learned their crafts on the job. Women learned most of their skills–spinning, cooking, sewing, at home. “In our school-centered obsession we forget that learning used to take place in a much more broad-based way,”says Fass.
Only white men were formally educated. While some white men never received much formal education, almost nobody else received any. Girls were sometimes educated, but they didn’t go to college. Blacks were mostly forbidden to learn to read and write, and Native Americans were not part of the colonial education system. They relied mainly on oral histories to pass down lessons and traditions.
Classroom, what classroom? Actual schools were found mainly in cities and large towns. For most other people, education meant a tutor teaching a small group of people in someone’s home or a common building. And the school year was more like a school season: usually about 13 weeks, says USC historian Carole Shammas. That meant that there was almost no such thing as a professional teacher.
Books were few and far between. There were no public libraries in the country in 1776. The biggest book collections were at colleges. Books were so expensive that getting a large enough collection to provide a serious education was one of the biggest barriers to founding a college. When Harvard was founded in 1636, it had a collection of about 1,000 books, which was considered an enormous amount at the time, according to Paula Fass.
Writing joined the other R’s. Teaching students to read was a lot easier than teaching writing, and writing was not necessary in a lot of professions. So many students learned just to read and do math. By 1776, teaching writing was becoming much more common.
No papers, pens, or pencils. Most students worked on slates–mini-chalkboards that allowed students to erase their work and keep at it until they got it right. Paper was expensive, so it was not commonly used, which also meant pens were not often used. Pencils had not yet been invented.
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