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| Lay teachers were simply people who knew a bit more than others and who were recruited to tour the countryside or take in a few students at home. Except in the cases of the Charron Brothers and the Rouillé Brothers, these lay teachers weren’t trained in “teacher’s college”. This system wasn’t instituted until the nineteenth century. Lay teachers were recruited on the basis of a test of morality administered by the bishop or his representantive, an engagement to the parish curé to be responsible for their conduct and, above all, an obligation to teach only children of their own sex. |
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A Supplementary IncomeSince towns and cities were already well-served by religious congregations, laymen worked instead in trade schools or as travelling schoolmasters in rural areas. For many of them, teaching was a second income. We know next to nothing about the women who taught, save for several mentions here and there of “secular girls” come to lend a strong hand to the nuns, but not much more.Historians have counted approximately 57 lay schoolmasters in the colony during the French regime. To mention just a few: the notary Séverin Ameau instructed children at Trois-Rivières in 1652; the master-bard Martin Boutet taught mathematics, surveying and navigation in 1668 at the Jesuit college in Quebec City; another notary, Jean-Baptiste Pothier, was schoolmaster at Lachine in 1686, and Louis Jolliet accumulated, during the course of his life, experience as an explorer, cartographer, hydrographer to the King, organist, merchant, landowner and professor at the college in Quebec City. As for Nicolas Métru, he was engaged by contract in 1674 to teach reading and writing “to the best of his ability” to the children of Jacques Charrier of Île d’Orléans. In exchange, Charrier offered Métru room and board, heat, and an annual salary of 80 livres. |
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