Some of these minutes are performed by school children. Does it sound like they having a nice time? What do you think their school is like?
In the past, education was very different from today. In Anglo-Saxon times, most children did not learn to read or write. Anglo-Saxon girls would learn housekeeping skills like weaving cloth, while boys would learn to chop down trees with an axe or use a spear in battle.
In the middle ages, schools were created to teach Latin to boys from wealthy families, but most children did not go to school. It took hundreds of years, until 1880, for school to be made compulsory for all children!
Even after this, boys and girls would often learn different subjects at school, such as woodwork for boys and sewing for girls. Until the 1986, teachers were allowed to hit children as a punishment.
This evening, ask the adults in your house about their experiences of school. Try to find out what subjects they studied and what their classrooms were like. Do you think schools have changed a lot?
Minutes in this collection
