eight o'clock in the morning
But it 's even more important that we hold fast to our sacred beliefs and pass them down . They ease life 's pain , give it purpose . `` It 's a genuine pleasure being the teacher for your children this year . Every school day , from eight o'clock in the morning till four in the evening , my thirty-seven pupils and I are in our own separate world over across the branch at the schoolhouse . They 're as fine a bunch as I 've ever had , and I 've been teaching now for seventeen years . `` Yet you can see for yourselves that if I teach these bright pupils only what is printed in the books , and if you provide only something for their dinner buckets , clothes to go on their backs , and a shelter for them at night , we all fail . `` During the short years that boys and girls are in our care , we must show them more than reading and writing and how to plant crops and how to get bread and meat on the table and how to marry and rear their own little ones .