School in the 1800s

School in the 1800s. Reading, 'riting, and 'rithmatic. , Grant attended local schools from 1827 to 1838, most of those years in Georgetown and in this building. Public schools as we know them did not exist at the time. This was a private or subscription school. Parents paid a tuition of $1.50 to $2 in cash or crops for their children to attend a 13-week term each winter. The children were needed to work at home the rest of the year. , Grant wrote about his school experience in his memoirs. He remembered that "a single teacher - who was often a man or woman incapable of teaching much, even if they imparted all they know-(taught)… thirty or forty scholars, male and female, from the infant learning the A B C's up to the young lady of eighteen and the boy of twenty, studying the highest branches taught - the three R's, 'Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmetic." , Grant vividly remembered the discipline applied at the school: "I can see John D. White - the school-teacher - now, with his long beech switch always in his hand… Switches were brought in bundles… by the boys for whose benefit they were intended. Often a whole bundle would be used up in a single day."