Plimouth Plantation and Fort Prickett

Johnny Jones, 9 August 2002

Since school is starting, I thought it was time for a little perspective, some of which we gained from trips we made to places that recreated history.

There was no time for schooling in the Plimouth, Massachusetts of 1627. Schooling was luxury reserved for gentry. As people moved west, looking for fortune or freedom, they left behind the possibility of schooling for their children. After visiting 17th century Plimouth, through the magic of recreated history, we visited Prickett's Fort, West Virginia, of 1774, a few days later.

There children were put to work as soon as possible. "There are a lot of jobs a two-year-old child could do," the guide there assured me. Jobs like churning butter, get rocks out of the garden, shoo away the crows, quiet the baby. These tasks were not done between playtimes, but as something that had to be done. As soon as possible, everyone contributed to the family enterprise.

Ten-year-old Amy was "way behind," according to the barefoot spinstress at her wheel. "You'd have to know how to cook by yourself at your age," she chided, "because at 13 you'd be married. And," she added, "if you were an average woman, you'd be dead at 25."

The men lived until 50 in that rugged frontier part of Virginia, just outside what is now Fairmont, West Virginia. But the women died to childbirth and shirt burns. With all their cooking done over an open fire wearing long skirts, many women were burned. And when the burn became infected, it was often fatal. People didn't know how to treat infections then, and medical treatment was not as available.

Going back to Plimouth, our forefathers thought the purpose of children was to serve their parents. "Children are another pair of hands to labor for their parents," I was told at Plimouth Plantation, where actors recreate the Plimouth Colony of 1627, with dress, speech, and housing. In fact, until about age seven children were thought not to be very bright. "At about that age they get a bit of wit about them," one historian said. A popular saying was that a child was "A soul in search of humanity."

The benefit of bettering themselves through schooling was closed to these children. Young men could be apprenticed at an early age to a good master and learn a trade. But if the master turned harsh or cruel or niggardly, that was too bad; there was no recourse.

Those were hard days, difficult times. But our ancestors had a vision to sustain them: of better days for their progeny, of living life the way they thought best, of common folk becoming gentry. How? "The land, miss. The land will make us lords," I was told by a historian/actor at Plimouth.

Opportunities for schooling wouldn't be just for children of the lords: it would be available for all children in this future age towards which our forefathers were striving.

Do we communicate to our children the privilege of a free education? That's what it is; a privilege and an opportunity.

There are places in the world today where an education is still too precious to be free, where it is the privilege of the upper classes, not the right of common laborers. One of our friends works to get uniforms and materials for the Mexican children her Christian group serves; otherwise, the children can't attend school.

We must remember to be thankful that each of our children has the advantage of attending school instead of needing to work for a living. That means times are good for us, that our society is wealthy enough to allow them this luxury. But without a sense of privilege, our children won't do their best.

I would be the first to tell you our schools are less than ideal. America's educational system has taken hits over the past few years, many of them well deserved. And yet, I remember my friend from Connecticut whose sister, along with her husband, was a missionary to Holland. They finally came back to the states. Why? "On any day when I went to school, at least half of the first-grade class would be in tears."  That's not the case here, and we are thankful.

Perhaps it would behoove us to both be thankful for the privilege of education for all our children, to encourage them to take full advantage of this opportunity, and at the same time to do what we can to improve our educational system. Science fiction writer H. G. Wells said, "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." Let's do what we can for education: the alternative is too drastic.

* This spelling was used by Governor Bradford of the original Plimouth colony, and so is preferred at Plimouth Plantation, Massachusetts.