Maggie's Farm

My mother grew up on the Canadian prairies during the early part of the last century. Her parents valued schooling, and all their children went to the local school (my mother and her elder sister in a horse and buggy; not certain how their brothers got there, but suspect - the boys being older - on horseback). My grandmother went so far as to insist the girls graduate and get a training - both ended up as RN's, while mother was also a teacher - on the grounds that it was easier for an "untrained" man to get a job than an "untrained" woman.

However, even in their part of Manitoba, school was not mandatory for all. A line was drawn around a town: inside the line, you had to send your children to school; outside the line, it was optional. This may well have been - at least in part - due to the difficulties of getting the young'uns off to school when said school was a fair distance away, the weather could be killer cold, and the only transport was by horse and buggy. But, as my mother remembered, the neighbor in the next farm over, just outside the "line" used that option to deny his daughters their schooling: he figured they would learn all they needed to know working around the house.