May 20th, 2008
A Few Useful Rules For Students
And you thought today’s kids were unruly. Some early school rules of etiquette from around 1900, from Horton Cooper’s North Carolina Mountain Folklore (1972):
- Neither boys nor girls must wink at one another.
- Boys shall not carry any girls in their arms or on their backs unless heavy rains or much ice have made the creeks and branches impossible to cross. No hugging, squeezing, or kissing shall take place while the girl is being transported across the water.
- Don’t pretend to see ghosts in an effort to frighten younger pupils.
- You shall not go swimming naked within 200 yards of the schoolhouse.
- You shall not bring to school any hawks claw for use in pinching the ears and noses of others.
- Do not put any dead pigs, polecats, or other dead animals in the schoolhouse loft to create a stink.
- You shall not argue hotly as to whether the earth is round or flat.
In some schools around this country they’re probably still arguing about that.
May 20th, 2008 at 10:17 am
You shall not go swimming naked within 200 yards of the schoolhouse.
Can we infer from this that swimming naked 250 yards away was a-okay, then?
May 20th, 2008 at 10:33 am
I’m trying to picture the context of that rule and what comes to mind is that where the schoolhouse was within sight of a creek, or one was near the footpath to the school, some of the boys may have liked showing off for the girls on the pretext of just having themselves a nice swim on a hot day. The gay boys back then would have, of course, not cared whether the swimming spot was close to the school or not since there would have been no prohibition on boys swimming together.
The really scary one was the prohibition on bringing hawk’s claws to school. A rule like that doesn’t come out of nowhere.