Glossary of Words and Concepts for Schoolhouse
The following are words and ideas that you will hear about when you attend the University of Regina Theatre Department's 2011 production of Schoolhouse. Some of these may already be familiar to you, especially if you are a fan of historical fiction. But just in case you aren’t, you can scroll down this page and find definitions that makes sense in the context of our play.
ACTIVITY:
But why be boring? Why not form teams, divide up this list without the definitions and go find your own definitions—team that finds the definitions fastest, as long as they are close to those below, wins.
Bonus points if your team's defnitions are more interesting and complete than the study guide.
And for more bonus points, when you go to the play, listen for words that you don’t recognize that aren’t in this list, and ought to be. Send the word to Kelley Jo Burke at Kelley.jo@sasktel.net, our study guide manager, and she’ll update the website, giving you credit for the catch. Anyone who does so will have their name entered for a prize at the end of the play’s run.
Here's the list without definitions:
Anti-I-over
Banshees
Big Boy
Concept of Self-Injury
Emily Dickinson
Entrance Exams
Epilepsy
Euchre
Fire Box
Gene Stratton-Porter
Grizzled
Hand bell
Hooligans
Inspector of Schools
Low Bower
Mangels
Mohawk
Mouth Organ
No Married Lady Teachers
Normal School
Nosey-Parker
One-room Schoolhouse
Patter-song
Polak
Recitation
Salpiglossis
School marm
Sempiternal
Slops
Strap
Suitcase Teachers
The Maple Leaf Forever
Training School Boy
Water Belly
“Wipers”
Here's the list with definitions:
Anti-I-over: This game needs a building large enough to hide a group of people and small enough to throw a ball over. The one-room schools, or their outhouses, were excellent for this. The only other equipment needed is a ball, preferably not a hard ball because of the danger of breaking windows. The players divide into two teams on either side of the building. Team I throws the ball over the building yelling, "Anti-over." Team II tries to catch the ball before it hits the ground. If someone succeeds in catching it, they all sneak around the building while the player who caught the ball tries to touch as many players from Team I with the ball as he can, before they reach the safety of the half way mark. Players tagged join Team II. In this way teams change sides each time the ball is successfully caught.
If Team II did not catch the ball, some player must return it the same way he received it. The team that captures all the players wins.
There are lots of tricks experienced players use to outwit the other side. There are techniques in throwing the ball so the other team can't catch it. There are strategies for slipping around the building and catching the other team unaware, for teams never know whether the ball 'has been caught until they see the other team come around the building or hear the call, "Anti-over." They also don't know who has the ball for only he can capture players.
ACTIVITY: If you have a small building, like a trailer or a shed on school grounds, organize a game. Use a soft rubber ball!
Banshees: The bean-sidhe (Gaelic spelling) is an Irish ancestral spirit appointed to forewarn members of certain ancient Irish families of their time of death, known for her haunting shriek. According to tradition, the banshee can only cry for five major Irish families: the O'Neills, the O'Briens, the O'Connors, the O'Gradys and the Kavanaghs. Intermarriage has since extended this select list.
Whatever her origins, the banshee chiefly appears in one of three guises: a young woman, a stately matron or a raddled old hag. These represent the triple aspects of the Celtic goddess of war and death, namely Badhbh, Macha and Mor-Rioghain.) She usually wears either a grey, hooded cloak or the winding sheet or grave robe of the unshriven dead. She may also appear as a washer-woman, and is seen apparently washing the blood stained clothes of those who are about to die. In this guise she is known as the bean-nighe (washing woman).
Although not always seen, her mourning call is heard, usually at night when someone is about to die. In 1437, King James I of Scotland was approached by an Irish seeress or banshee who foretold his murder at the instigation of the Earl of Atholl. This is an example of the banshee in human form. There are records of several human banshees or prophetesses attending the great houses of Ireland and the courts of local Irish kings. In some parts of Leinster, she is referred to as the bean chaointe (keening woman) whose wail can be so piercing that it shatters glass. In Kerry, the keen is experienced as a "low, pleasant singing"; in Tyrone as "the sound of two boards being struck together"; and on Rathlin Island as "a thin, screeching sound somewhere between the wail of a woman and the moan of an owl".
The banshee may also appear in a variety of other forms, such as that of a hooded crow, stoat, hare and weasel - animals associated in Ireland with witchcraft.
Big Boy: A teenage boy, usually 15 or more, who is considered too old to go to school full-time, and is rather expected to work, often on a family farm, whenever needed.
Concept of the One-room Schoolhouse: (for lots more information on the one-room schoolhouse, go to Theme: One-room Schoolhouse) One-room schoolhouses were built in rural Canada to meet the educational needs of children scattered across the countryside. One teacher taught Grades One to Eight or more. In early Canada, rural children were spread far and wide, living on farms and in small villages. There were no buses to gather them up each morning and take them to class, and not enough children to construct large schools. The one-room schoolhouse was the solution to the problem.
Concept of Self-Injury: Adapted from the Self-Injury section of the Canadian Mental Health Association website.
In the play Schoolhouse, there is a character who hurts himself as a way of dealing with painful emotions. This is called self injury, or in this case, cutting.
What is Self Injury?
As with bullying, self injury, also called self harm and self abuse, is something that happened in the past, and still happens today. Young people cope with emotions in different ways. Tears, anger, depression and withdrawal are some of the ways of responding to – and finding relief from – overwhelming feelings. Some teens are troubled by frequent intense and painful emotions. While some are able to express these feelings, others do not know how or are unable to find the words and the build up of feelings makes it difficult for them to think clearly. Some teens release this bottleneck by cutting or burning or otherwise hurting themselves. Because this is a very secretive activity, it is difficult to determine exactly how many young people do this. In one survey, approximately 13% of adolescents who responded indicated that they engaged in self-injurious behaviours.
Who Self Injures?
There is no one kind of self injurers. According to research, most come from financially comfortable homes, have average to high intelligence, and low self esteem. Some 40% have a history of eating disorders. Almost half report physical or sexual abuse during childhood. Almost all say that they grew up discouraged from expressing emotions, especially anger and sadness.
If you know someone who is self-injuring, it is important to tell someone you trust.
For more information about self harm prevention:
Kidshelpphone.ca or Teenshealth
Emily Dickinson: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson) Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Although Dickinson was a prolific private poet, fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality.Despite unfavorable reviews and skepticism of her literary prowess during the late 19th and early 20th century, critics now consider Dickinson to be a major American poet.
One of her poems:
Hope
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
Entrance Exams: If students planned to attend college, they spent most of their last year in public school preparing for provincial entrance exams. You could not enter most colleges without passing entrance exams.
Epilepsy: A brain disorder in which a person has repeated seizures (convulsions), that can be as extreme as violent shaking and tossing of the whole body, fainting, loss of alertness (that is, awake but not knowing what is happening), facial twitching, or simple staring spells. The type of seizure depends on the part of the brain affected and cause of epilepsy.
Euchre: A trick-taking card game. You need four players and a deck of 24 standard playing cards consisting of the aces, kings, queens, jacks, 10, and 9 of each of the four suits. A standard 52-card deck can be used, omitting the cards from 2 to 8 of each suit.
Learn how to play: http://www.parentdish.com/2011/06/10/euchre-game/
Fire Box: The part of the fireplace or wood stove where the fire actually burns.
Gene Stratton-Porter: The JK Rowling of the turn of the 20th century. In a time where many women didn't work, she was an extremely successful author and filmmaker. Her two most successful books were Freckles, and A Girl of the Limberlost, which is been made into a movie four times.
Grizzled: Someone who has some gray hair is considered grizzled.
Hand Bell: Before schools had bells that ring over a public announcement system, teachers had bells which they rang by hand. They were used to call students to school, and get students’ attention.
Hooligans: Rough or misbehaving young people.
Inspector of Schools: Depending upon the school district, the Inspector of Schools was almost always a man who was either elected or volunteered to supervise the teachers in the district, to make sure that they were following the required school texts, managing the class, and following the rules for their own behavior, because the young woman who taught in the rural schools were very strictly monitored for moral behavior, so the Inspector was responsible for assessing "the efficiency and character and usefulness" of teachers working in the provincial school system. During the 1890s and early 1900s, the inspectors recorded their assessments and reported to the Superintendent of Education in the province.
Low Bower: Low card in Euchre.
Mangels: A large coarse yellow-to reddish-orange beet grown chiefly as food for cattle.
Mohawk: The name given to the Kanien'kehake (people of the flint) by the Algonquin people, later adopted by the Europeans who came to North America, who had difficulty pronouncing Kanien'kehake. The Kanien'kehake was one of the five founding Nations of the Iroquois League (or Confederacy). The other Nations in the Confederacy were the Cayuga, the Seneca, the Oneida, and the Onondaga. The sixth Nation to join was the Tuscarora.
Mouth Organ: Harmonica.
No Married Lady Teachers: The young women who taught in rural schools had to be unmarried women of "good moral character". They couldn’t be seen to drink, smoke, or “keep company” with men unchaperoned.
Normal School: Teacher-training school. The Saskatchewan Normal School was a publicly funded provincial post-secondary institution for the training of teachers. Such training began in Regina as early as 1890 with short courses for men and women who had completed Grade 8 and who wanted to teach elementary school subjects, often in one-room schools in rural Saskatchewan. The term “normal school” comes from the French-- é cole Normale, meaning a place where future teacher learned the “norms”, or proper methods of school instruction.
The first Normal schools were set up in eastern Canada in the mid-19th century. But the first permanent home for teacher training in Saskatchewan was built in 1913 at the corner of Broad Street and College Avenue, now the Canada Saskatchewan Production Studios. The first classes were held there in January 1914. To meet the growing demand for teachers as the population of Saskatchewan grew dramatically after World War One, normal schools were also opened in Saskatoon and Moose Jaw in the 1920s. These three normal schools trained thousands of teachers until 1940, when the Regina and Saskatoon buildings were taken over by the Royal Canadian Air Force to for military training.
Nosey-Parker: A busybody, someone nosey.
Patter-song: A very fast comic song generally featuring tongue-twisting rhymes—like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S64hbp7kbU&feature=related
( Having the words might help you keep up)
A modern Major-General by Gilbert and Sullivan:
I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus;
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous:
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
I know our mythic history, King Arthur's and Sir Caradoc's;
I answer hard acrostics, I've a pretty taste for paradox,
I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus,
In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous;
I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies,
I know the croaking chorus from The Frogs of Aristophanes!
Then I can hum a fugue of which I've heard the music's din afore,
And whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense Pinafore.
Then I can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform,
And tell you ev'ry detail of Caractacus's uniform:
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
In fact, when I know what is meant by "mamelon" and "ravelin",
When I can tell at sight a Mauser rifle from a Javelin,
When such affairs as sorties and surprises I'm more wary at,
And when I know precisely what is meant by "commissariat",
When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery,
When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery—
In short, when I've a smattering of elemental strategy—
You'll say a better Major-General has never sat a gee.
For my military knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventury,
Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century;
But still, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
Polak: An ethnic insult, referring to Polish people.
Recitation: Performing poetry, or stories out loud.
Salpiglossis: A flower whose common name is Painted Tongue.
School Marm: School mistress, teacher.
Sempiternal: Ever-lasting
Slops: Household food leftovers went into a slop bucket and were fed to the pigs. Slops could also mean unpleasant food, only fit for pigs.
Strap: a piece of leather or rubber, often with a handle, given in the past to teachers and principals to use to strike students as corporal punishment.
Corporal punishment is a form of physical punishment that involves the deliberate infliction of pain as retribution for doing something wrong, or for the purpose of disciplining or reforming a wrongdoer, or to deter attitudes or behaviour deemed unacceptable. The term usually refers to methodically striking the offender with an implement, whether in judicial, domestic, or educational settings.
Is corporal punishment still practiced in Canadian public schools?
In most other Canadian jurisdictions, the strap continued to be an important instrument in the teacher’s disciplinary arsenal until the 1990s. It was not until 2004 that the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that corporal punishment was an unreasonable application of force in the maintenance of classroom discipline.
But in the late 19th and right through to the middle 20th century (in other words when some of your parents were in school), students (boys and girls) frequently experienced and probably always feared the ruler, the strap, or the teacher’s open hand.
In what decade did it become illegal to strap students in Canadian classrooms?
Was it
a) the 1870s, when compulsory education was introduced in Ontario and Atlantic Canada;
b) the 1960s, when “child-centered” education practices swept the nation;
c) the 2000s, in the wake of a campaign against child abuse by children’s rights advocates?
The correct answer is c) – more precisely 2004, when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that corporal punishment was an unreasonable application of force in the maintenance of classroom discipline. With this ruling, the strap and other instruments used for disciplinary purposes formally disappeared from Canadian schools.
Teachers can only use reasonable force to restrain or guide a student. Teachers must only use the necessary force required to remove a student from the classroom or to make a student obey instructions. They cannot use physical punishment to discipline or correct behaviour.
See article: Banning the Strap: The End of Corporal Punishment in Canadian Schools
And finally, not everyone agrees with this move away from coporal punishment. Here’s an article from the Edmonton Journal from February 1st, 2004:
Supreme Court takes strap out of teachers' hands
Suitcase Teachers: Teachers who would come into a community just for the teaching job, but not become part of the community, or plan to live there long.
The Maple Leaf Forever: "The Maple Leaf Forever" is a Canadian song written by Alexander Muir (1830–1906) in 1867, the year of Canada's Confederation.
Here are the lyrics:
The song makes reference to James Wolfe capturing Quebec in 1759 during the Seven Years War and the Battle of Queenston Heights and Battle of Lundy's Lane during the War of 1812.
"In days of yore, from Britain's shore,
Wolfe, the dauntless hero, came
And planted firm Britannia's flag
On Canada's fair domain.
Here may it wave, our boast our pride
And, joined in love together,
The thistle, shamrock, rose entwine
The Maple Leaf forever!
CHORUS:
The Maple Leaf, our emblem dear,
The Maple Leaf forever!
God save our Queen and Heaven bless
The Maple Leaf forever!
At Queenston Heights and Lundy's Lane,
Our brave fathers, side by side,
For freedom, homes and loved ones dear,
Firmly stood and nobly died;
And those dear rights which they maintained,
We swear to yield them never!
Our watchword evermore shall be
"The Maple Leaf forever!"
CHORUS
Our fair Dominion now extends
From Cape Race to Nootka Sound;
May peace forever be our lot,
And plenteous store abound:
And may those ties of love be ours
Which discord cannot sever,
And flourish green o'er freedom's home
The Maple Leaf forever!
CHORUS
On merry England's far famed land
May kind heaven sweetly smile,
God bless old Scotland evermore
and Ireland's Em'rald Isle!
And swell the song both loud and long
Till rocks and forest quiver!
God save our Queen and Heaven bless
The Maple Leaf forever!
CHORUS
Training School Boy: A boy who has been sent to a school for juvenile offenders. Families could foster training school boys. This was sometimes done as a charitable act, but often as a way of getting free farm help.
Water Belly: Urinary calculi, or water belly, a common disease of male sheep, is caused by the formation of small stones, called calculi, in the urinary tract that cause retention of urine and rupture of the urinary bladder.
“Wipers”: The nickname of the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915. The 1st Canadian Division had just arrived on the Western Front where they won recognition by holding their ground against a new weapon of modern warfare - chlorine gas. It was also in the trenches at this second Battle of Ypres that John McCrae wrote the poem "In Flanders Fields". More than six thousand Canadians were killed or wounded in forty-eight hours, 2000 died.
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