The Little Red Nova Scotian Schoolhouse

 A legion of teachers pioneered the story of education in thousands of one-room schools for more than 200 years in Nova Scotia. Benchmark advances from the primitive platforms first employed to educate children were realized through the Education Act of 1855 when, with the government’s blessing, Nova Scotia became the first province to provide free education to all children. Marking the occasion, the Provincial Normal School was established. Its mission: to instruct its students to practical training in the art of teaching.

By access to the archives of graduates from 1892 through1940, the author takes a look at the operation of the “Normal” up to its conversion to Nova Scotia Teachers College in 1961. Focus is on a small selection of one-room schools in Lunenburg County, Cape Breton and the Annapolis Valley as well as Black community schools and residential schools. The flavour of the increasingly distant era of one-room schools is brought out through the life and times of teachers and pupils in the various communities served.

 In early days, with the lack of books and other teaching materials, everything depended upon the teacher. It was only in the late 1830s, during a severe shortage of teachers, that the Nova Scotia government realized women were probably better suited to teaching than men, although training for them was minimal. To a large extent, the history of women’s participation in schooling reflects their unequal position in society. Upon marriage, women teachers gave up their job to care for family and home. In a landmark ruling in 1838, the provincial legislature decided that women could be hired and allowed to retain their wages.