Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 Summary and Analysis

Chapter 9: As the frontier became settled and a new society emerged, there was a call and a need for education. Because teaching did not promise the kind of salary that would attract men, frontier mothers answered the call; having received schooling back East, they proceeded to teach what they knew to the children of the prairie. At first, the teacher taught at her own home for her own children and for neighboring children. The hard dirt floor served as a blackboard, into which would be scratched spelling and math lessons. There were no grades; the same material would be taught to children of varying ages.

Eventually, a town might pool its resources and construct a schoolhouse. The first schoolhouses were very bare, having perhaps nothing more than a stove for warmth and a small slate blackboard. A...