A majority of the residents of Colonial Americans could not read nor write. Women had almost no educational opportunities. The classroom was an empty-looking place with only chalk or pencils and very little paper and no chalkboards. There were never blackboards or maps in colonial schools. To write, the schoolmaster often had to use a stick of charcoal on a piece of birch bark that they pulled off the trees. Whenever the children used pens, they were cut out of goose quills and the schoolmaster made the ink
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