Gardiner High School In 1866

22 Greater Kennebec & Androscoggin River Valleys

Gardiner High School In 1866

Nay-sayers influenced educational attitudes

Brian Swartz

Before Gardiner High School ended its winter term on Thursday, March 1, 1866, the public was invited to visit classes and see how students were doing.

But “the number of visitors was small, showing a lamentable” lack of interest by parents, commented the local Kennebec Reporter. Two of seven high school directors showed up, as did only one Gardiner school-committee member. Two ministers, “one layman, and about a dozen ladies” checked out what students were doing.

“The order of the school was good, showing a marked improvement in this respect during the year,” wrote a Reporter staffer, perhaps co-publisher G.O. Bailey or his partner, F.J. Brown. The staffer popped into various classrooms, witnessed “one of the best recitations in Arithmetic to which we ever listened,” watched students “analyzing and parsing … Milton’s Paradise Lost,” and watched “beginners” (today’s freshmen) learn about geometry and American history.

“We have not passed a day more pleasantly of late, than that we spent in the High School, listening to these recitations,” the newspaperman stated.

The Reporter’s publishers had hoped “to see a little more interest manifested by our citizens generally.” Officials elected to run the Gardiner schools should have been there March 1. As for parents, if they “would now and then look in upon the exercises,” doing so “would encourage the teachers and animate the pupils.”

The Reporter discussed the Gardiner residents “who are constantly grumbling” about the high school while “endeavoring to defeat appropriations to sustain it.”

Thinking they knew everything about the schools without darkening the doors, such bellyachers “are those who know the least about it,” the paper commented.

The sidewalk school directors’ anti-education attitude permeated down to Gardiner’s younger generation, too. Throughout the Gardiner school sys-

In Business For 50 Years, Insured & Licensed

HYDROFRACTURING MODERN AIR HAMMER METHODS FREE ESTIMATES

GEOTHERMAL DRILLING

COMPLETE SERVICE FROM WELL TO HOUSE WATER PUMPS • SALES & SERVICE

Family Owned & Operated

622-4018 • 582-4324

488 Northern Ave., Farmingdale www.rolfeswelldrilling.net

CUSTOMER SERVICE IS THE HEART OF OUR BUSINESS!

GREAT DEALS ON Solid & Engineered Hardwood • Carpet • Waterproof Luxury Vinyl Ceramic & Porcelain Tile • Old Village Paints • Window Treatments & much more!

Open M-F 8:30am-5pm Sat. 9am-2pm

Maine Instrument Flight

Reliable Charter Service Since 1946 ____________________ Great Rates, Fast & Comfortable ____________________ Convenient...Fly on YOUR Schedule ____________________ Anywhere in the U.S. & Canada ____________________ Single & Twin Engine Aircraft ____________________

*Part 141 Flight Training* 622-1211 • 1-888-643-3597

State Airport • Augusta www.mif.aero

Open Mon.-Fri. 8am-6pm • Sat. 8:30am-2pm Full Service Pharmacy

Local Owner: John Twadelle

Text message alerts when prescriptions are ready! Request refi lls via web or mobile

Harvest Time Natural Foods

Serving the Augusta Area for over 40 Years!

Vitamins • Books • Cosmetics Pet Food & Products Beer & Wine Making Supplies Herbs • Fresh Produce Essential Oils & More!

Open Every Day!

207-623-8700

171 Capitol St., Suite 1 • Augusta, ME

Art • Craft • Design

tem, even to the lower grades, “there is a sort of public opinion prevailing among the pupils, that their dignity and rights are sadly interfered with, by being obliged to attend school,” noticed the Reporter’s staffer.

Even grammar students saw school as an educational jail and claimed, “one of their inalienable rights” was “to be free from the restraints and drudgeries of the school room,” he observed. In the lower grades existed “very little ambition to prepare” for Gardiner High School.

A different problem existed there, a problem that continues among many older high-school students to this day. Most boys looked forward to working in “a store” or “the mills.” Rather than valuing their education, older boys wanted jobs; school was only a roadblock to that goal.

“The highest ambition of many … girls are to be regarded as ‘young ladies,’” a societal category that meant fancy dresses, dances, and attention from wealthy men, the newspaperman commented. For such students, the goal was “impossible” to achieve “while they attend school.

“We think the parents are more to blame for this state of things than [are] the scholars,” the Reporter stated. “They talk against the school and find fault with the management.”

Parents were “impatient if their children trouble them at all, evenings and mornings, with the lessons to be learned,” the newspaperman pointed out. Parents sympathized with children complaining about “the length and severity” of the homework.

Referring to parents, “they grumble because there is a regular course of studies to … pursue and talk as if the [educational] system” should be tossed out, the Reporter commented. It was no wonder, “when fathers and mothers talk in this way, that the children are not interested in their studies” and preferred not to attend school.

This across-the-generations’ anti-education attitude meant that Gardiner taxpayers were not getting the biggest bang — “the full benefit of the money” — for their bucks, the newspaperman wrote. Gardiner residents needed to “cease this querulous spirit.”

Despite complaints that all high schoolers “are required to study Latin and Greek,” this was not true. Directors had established “two courses of study,” and parents chose which route their children took.

One course prepared boys for college and gave “girls the same opportunity for acquiring a knowledge of the languages,” the Kennebec Reporter stated. The other course prepared “the boys for business, with like facilities for girls.” This course included many subjects, such as algebra, astronomy, botany, geology, geometry, and philosophy, but some parents wanted their children to take what should be called

(cont. on page 24)

Civic Center

Augusta Civic Center Inn

281 Civic Center Drive │ Augusta, Maine 04330 207-623-1000 • 800-808-1188 110 Community Drive │ Augusta, Maine 04330 207-622-4751

• 99 Spacious rooms with refrigerator & microwave • Complimentary deluxe continental breakfast • Health spa with fully equipped exercise room • Indoor heated swimming pool • 99 Restaurant and Pub open daily for lunch & dinner • Cable television with free HBO • Free WiFi • Pet friendly comfortinn.com/hotel/me017

Pet friendly • IHOP Restaurant Exercise facility • Outdoor pool Free WiFi • Complimentary Breakfast

(cont. from page 23) the “college-prep” program.

These parents did not ask if their children would attend Gardiner High long enough to become proficient in Latin, the newspaperman commented.

Other parents placed children in the business program but were “unwilling to send them [to school] long enough to acquire a good understanding” of the offered classes, he wrote. “After a term or two, the whole [effort] is abandoned, and precious little benefit has been derived from the school.

“Whose fault is it, but that of the parents?” he asked.

“We have children of our own to be educated and are desirous that our present school system should be sustained for the benefit of the children of the city” and “improved and perfected, so that it may in time be equal to that in Bangor, Bath and Portland,” the newspaperman wrote.

“It will be a shame and disgrace to Gardiner, if it is not,” he concluded.

Fort Halifax Blockhouse in Winslow, ca. 1920. Item # 5231 from the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

SOUNIER FLOORING

Quality Installation Commercial • Residential

Family Owned ~ Fully Insured

JOE SOUNIER 207-458-2964 RYAN SOUNIER 207-458-7405

TRUST A PHARMACIST WITH YOUR CBD NEEDS!!!

OIL/TINCTURE PRICES:

• 3500 mg - $120 • 1500 mg - $60 • 500 mg - $40

THC FREE - FREE SHIPPING CENTRAL MAINE CBD

18 China Rd., Albion, ME

207-437-5555 • Toll Free: 844-249-1849 -

Ask for Chuck

Free Estimates! Call 207-877-0628

Bookkeeping services to customers throughout the state of Maine

207-453-9388

Start of a bicycle race in Fairfield, ca. 1887. The contestants are Roland T. Patten (right), Cal Weir, and Howard Breen of Portland. Item # 8142 from the collections of The Skowhegan History House & Research Center and the collections of the Maine Historical Society and www.VintageMaineImages.com

A proud provider of clean water to all of Maine since 1995

207-341-1001

FEED COMMODITIES INTERNATIONAL

Your Partner for Profi tability

Open Mon-Fri 8-5 & 1st and 3rd Sat. of each month 8-12

Your Local Farm Store • Nutritional & Economic Consulting Specializing in Commercial Family Dairy Farms Variety of Bulk Grains and Blends Custom Filled to Order

487-5589 54 North Rd. • Detroit, ME