Came across this uncited tidbit on a real estate law firm website:
?ÿ"An interesting historical note is that in the U.S., many school systems used to teach basic land surveying and description reading as part of the public education curriculum.?ÿ Measuring and measurement calculations were taught as part of math lessons, with deed reading as part of both reading and math lessons."
I can't recall such a curriculum in my public school education, either in math, civics or reading classes in the 1960s.?ÿ Can any (really) old-timers chime in??ÿ I suspect if true it was in the 1800s, not the 1900s.?ÿ
Maybe back when farming was what most people did, yeah.?ÿ The closest I ever got to surveying type stuff in school was the Cartesian coordinate system.
A couple of years ago my "Economic Development" Daughter was touring around her small coastal city with a representative of the school system visiting various businesses to see how the school could adapt to keep kids from leaving for the big city. They stopped at a local glass/window manufacturer who lamented that the kids who applied for jobs didn't have the basic math skills to work for him. The educator asked what they could be doing and the business owner handed him a case of measuring tapes and said that they could have them if they taught students how to read them.?ÿ It seems simple things like this are being left out of our system these days.?ÿ?ÿ
I didn't think I was that old but, yes, I remember in elementary school being exposed to acreage calculations starting at a fence corner, some history of the rectangular system of public lands, and how to determine the height of a flag pole by measuring the length of its shadow and estimating the angle at the opposite end of that right triangle.
Sure planted a seed ...
I don't remember any time in elementary or high school where we explicitly discussed land measure, boundaries, PLSS, etc.?ÿ Areas in math class might have included examples of square or triangular lots but I don't recall converting square feet to acres.
I had a government class before I graduated in 1968, but it was about the offices, elections, courts, and taxes.
I learned about the PLSS because the county newspaper published the real estate transactions, and Dad would look them up in a summary plat book that had been for sale some years before.?ÿ He knew where most people in the county lived, much like Holy Cow does in his area now.?ÿ Since I've left the home town, there have been so many people moving out, moving in, or dying, that now most of the names in the newspaper there don't mean anything to me.
I also while in high school discovered some articles in a history magazine that related to the PLSS, particularly William Burt's work on the 5th Principal Meridian, and learned to read the GLO survey notes.
I don't recall anything specifically about surveying in our class assignments and one of my classmates was named Pythagoras.?ÿ He had a real knack for science and math stuff.
I do recall working the flag pole and its shadow type of problem somewhere along the line.?ÿ Another classmate named Archimedes had a fascination with levers and motion as I recall.
Using papyrus takes a certain amount of skill that has been lost on those who favor paper.
@warren-smith I too remember the flag pole question in one of my math classes.?ÿ Probably around 7th grade in 1972.?ÿ When did you see said question?
I learned all the math one would need to be a surveyor in high school, but the only discussion on boundaries I remember was a quick explanation about what those squares were on a top map.?ÿ
About 30 years ago I was working on a large committee attempting to recruit a poultry packing company from Georgia to open a plant in our area due to the vast amount of feed available for their growing operations.?ÿ At one meeting there was a large map showing several counties and the road systems.?ÿ The fellow from Georgia pointed at the map and said what are all these straight lines all over the place.?ÿ When he was told those were roads running on most section lines, he could not believe it.?ÿ "Those are all roads ?!?!"
About as close I as I ever came to anything like that in school was a lesson and test in woodshop.?ÿ We had to read and figure the hypotenuses using a framing square.?ÿ Which btw use to have a lot more info on them than they do now.
