A typical schoolroom would be a fairly small, one-room log structure. Towns generally did have a school, and in some rural areas, there might be a small country school serving children of a broad range of ages and learning levels. A subscription school was one where parents paid the teacher to enroll their child.

Children were especially needed at home during planting and harvest time, so many attended school during the winter. The majority of children had a limited formal education if any. Few attended school for more than a few years.

The frontier education was a rudimentary one. Most of children's time was spent learning and practicing the practical home and farm skills. The formal school curriculum was based on spelling, reading, writing and ciphering(arithmetic), which was considered a subject for boys. Penmanship was greatly emphasized. Subjects such as geography, science, history or literature were little known due to a lack of textbooks and the limited education of the teachers themselves. Because there were few supplies and resources, teachers taught by rote memorization. The term "blab school" referred to the method of a teacher dictating the lesson and having students repeat it back. The Bible was the book most often used to teach reading and might be the only book that a family possessed. Spelling books or primers would be passed down in the family and these usually contained short basic grammar sections and quotations on morality and religious or historical topics.

Lesson 9: Susannah Johnson's recollections of her frontier schooling

 

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