19+Century+KTA

EQ: Is life better now or then?

Figure out whether your life is "better" than someone living in the early 19th century using the [|data base] of 19th Century (1800-1899) primary and secondary source documents from Old Sturbridge Village. In class we will discuss what "better" means. Hmmmmm....you must utilize at least two primary and two secondary sources.

General guidelines:

Pick two topics that you will research. Find four things from the 19th Century about each topic. Find a primary source example for each. Compare and contrast them with the 21st Century Come to a conclusion on whether life was better in the 19th Century or the 21st Century

=Chores =

the boys taking care of the stock
 * Boy Chores**


 * Family Chores**

shelling so many bushels of corn or cutting, splitting or carrying in to the house an allotted quantity of wood in the winter, hoeing an allotted portion of the garden or other similar work in the summer. The tea things washed, the vegetables were gathered for the morrow, the linen taken in, and other chores done. At sunset the cows came from the pasture. Milking finished and the milk strained, the day’s labor was ended.
 * Women and Girl Chores**

August afternoons mother and Aunt Sarah usually took their sewing Helped milk morning and night.


 * Men's Chores**

walke[d] after the Cows & on my Way back, went & opened my Store of apples, getting Wood .Jobs **Conclusion The 21st century is better better because there is a lot less chores.

http://www.osv.org/explore_learn/document_viewer.php?DocID=987 http://www.osv.org/explore_learn/document_viewer.php?DocID=74 http://www.osv.org/explore_learn/document_viewer.php?DocID=125 http://www.osv.org/explore_learn/document_viewer.php?DocID=36**************

School
When it started//-// Abijah Wilkins (e.g of discipline)**//-//
 * //School was held for ten or twelve weeks in the winter months, usually beginning after Thanksgiving. For young children, whose work was not needed at home, there was also an eight-week term in the summer. Some children went to school nearly every day it was in session; others attended only when their parents did not need them at home.//

ell, the afternoon of the first day, Abijah thrust a pin into a boy beside him, which made him suddenly cry out with a sharp pain. The sufferer was questioned; Abijah was accused, and found guilty.
 * Abijah Wilkins had for years been called the worst boy in school. Masters could do nothing with him. He was surly, saucy, profane, and truthless. Mr. Patch took him from an alms-house* when he was eight years old, which was eight years before the point of time now in view. In his family were mended neither his disposition, his manners, nor even his clothes. He looked like a morose, unpitied pauper still. He had shaken his knurly and filthy fist in the very face and eyes of the last winter’s teacher. Mr. Johnson was told of this son of perdition before he began, and was prepared to take some efficient step at his first offence.

[Part 2] The master requested James Clark to go to his room, and bring a rattan he would find there, as if the formidable ferule* was unequal to the present exigency*. James came with a rattan very long and very elastic, as if it had been selected from a thousand, not to walk with, but to whip. Then he ordered all the blinds next to the road to be closed. He then said, “Abijah, come this way.” He came. “The school may shut their books, and suspend their studies a few minutes. Abijah, take off your frock*, fold it up, lay it on the seat behind you.” Abijah obeyed these several commands with sullen tardiness. Here, a boy up toward the back seat burst out with a sort of shuddering laugh, produced by a nervous excitement he could not control. “Silence!” said the master, with a thunder, and a stamp on the floor that made the house quake. All was as still as midnight—not a foot moved, not a seat cracked, not a book rustled. The school seemed to be appalled. The expression of every countenance was changed; some were unnaturally pale, some flushed, and eighty distended and moistening eyes were fastened on the scene. The awful expectation was too much for one poor girl. “May I go home?” she whined with an imploring and terrified look. A single glance from the countenance of authority crushed the trembler down into her seat again. A tremulous sigh escaped from one of the larger girls, then all was breathlessly still again. “Take off your jacket also, Abijah. Fold it and lay it on your frock.” Mr. Johnson then took his chair, and set it away at the farthest distance the floor would permit, as if all the space that could be had would be necessary for the operations about to take place. He then took the rattan, and seemed to examine it closely, drew it through his hand, bent it almost double, laid it down again. He then took off his own coat, folded it up, and laid it on the desk. Abijah’s breast then heaved like a bellows*, his limbs began to tremble, and his face was like a sheet. The master now took the rattan in his right hand, and the criminal by the collar with his left, his large knuckles pressing hard against the shoulder of the boy. He raised the stick high over the shrinking back. Then, oh! what a screech! Had the rod fallen? No, it still remained suspended in the air. “O—I won’t do so agin—I’ll //never// do so agin—O—O—don’t—I will be good—sartinly will.” The threatening instrument of pain was gently taken from its elevation. The master spoke: “You promise, do you?” “Yis, sir,—oh! yis, sir.” The tight grasp was withdrawn from the collar. “Put on your frock and jacket, and go to your seat. The rest of you may open your books again.” The school breathed again. Paper rustled, feet were carefully moved, the seats slightly cracked, and all things went stilly on as before. Abijah kept his promise. He became an altered boy; obedient, peaceable, studious. This long and slow process of preparing for the punishment was artfully designed by the master, gradually to work up the boy’s terrors and agonizing expectations to the highest pitch, until he should yield like a babe to the intensity of his emotions. His stubborn nature, which had been like an oak on the hills which no storm could prostrate, was whittled away and demolished, as it were, sliver by sliver.

Not Abijah Wilkins only, but the whole school were subdued to the most humble and habitual obedience by the scene I have described. The terror of it seemed to abide in their hearts. The school improved much this winter, that is, according to the ideas of improvement then prevailing. Lessons were well gotten, and well said, although the //why// and the //wherefore// of them were not asked or given.

supplies** //a small school exercise book with a grey-blue paper cover//

Conclusion 21 century because you didn't get beat by teachers http://www.osv.org/explore_learn/document_viewer.php?DocID=146** http://www.osv.org/explore_learn/document_viewer.php?DocID=822