History of Boone County Quakers - Boone County Community Network

eyond the Ohio, these Friends began for the right education of their children,
and all the meeting records reveal a deep concern for good schools."
(Later Periods of Quakerism, I, 413-The Contribution of the Society of Friends To
Education In Indiana by Ethel McDaniel, 1939.)
Quaker schools were not started to prepare children for college but rather for
life. An old German, at one time a member of the Government Education Bureau,
said of the Friends: "The Quakers have the true idea of education. They
educated the body, intellect, and heart together, which is the true system of
education, for if you educate the intellect alone, you have a cold and formal
Christian, or if you cultivate the heart and emotions alone, you have a fanatic,
with his hobbies. Quakers solved this problem by training their children to
manual labor on the farm, while their minds were trained in the school-room,
and their spiritual training was promoted in their meetings where they... were
taught to listen to the voice of the Spirit." (Quoted in Autobiography of Allen Jay
Philadelphia, 1910. pp. 68-69)
Discipline in the Quaker school was varied, in the early years, "Beech and hazel
rods had a wonderfully stirring effect on both mind and body." In later years
Quaker discipline removed the rod. "The Quaker schoolmaster did not rule with a
rod. Rarely if ever, was one kept in the schoolhouse, and for my part, I have no
recollection of ever having seen the rod applied to any pupil in a Quaker school.
They maintained perfect order and strict discipline. This was done by moral
power and not by physical force. If a boy or girl violated the rules he was at once
expelled from the school and sent home, bearing a letter stating the cause, and
he was not permitted to return until brought back by the parent, and being
there, was required to state in the presence of the school an apology for his ill
conduct, and a promise, if permitted to return, to thereafter conduct himself or
herself, as the case might be, in a proper manner as a pupil of the school."
Sugar Plain had a large influence in the Thorntown area. "Walnut Grove School
stood beside Walnut Grove meetinghouse and was under the direct control of
Sugar Plain Monthly Meeting. In 1869 school was held in a frame school building,
which stood just south of the meetinghouse. A raised boardwalk, for the
convenience of attendance at midweek meeting, connected the meetinghouse
and school. Thorntown meeting had an elementary school for only a short time.
The dates seem to have been lost. It was under the care of Sugar Plain Monthly
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