By Velma M. Rose Smith

There is a great contrast between the schools of today and those of the Colonial days. Today almost all the children ride school buses, to large school buildings usually built of brick. The colonial children walked, to a small one room school house made from logs. Our windows have glass panes, theirs was made of parchment. Our schools have desks, and they sat on long wooden benches. We have electric lights, and they used candles. Today we write on paper with pens and pencils, colonial children wrote with slate pencils on slates. Today’s schools have water fountains and inside toilets, the colonial children drank from a single tin dipper in the water pail on a bench and washed in a public wash basin, and ran out to the out-houses, boys on one side of the school house and girls on the other side. Today they have hot lunches served in a cafeteria, but the colonial children carried “totes” of food, sandwiches, fruit, cookies, or leftovers, from home for their lunches.