The One-Room Schoolhouse
I'm not sure if this is the one-room schoolhouse my mother and a few of her sisters attended before it was closed and they went into the nearby city to school and I don't know how old they were when they made the switch. I do know they graduated from the Catholic high school which has since been torn down and is now the sight of the local fire department.
The one-room schoolhouse they attended was up the road from where they lived-down a side road just as it curved by a bunch of maples. The creek that ran behind their farmhouse ran behind the school as well. The school is long gone but the maples are still there. Sometimes I go down that old country road. I slow down before that turn; imagining exactly where that school sat and imagining my mother and her sisters walking along that very road. If this is the school-then this is where my parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents bought the desks, books, and chalkboards for me and my cousins for our chicken coop clubhouse.
Looking at the picture I think how far we've come in educating our children. Some of that is good and some of that isn't. How simple it all looked back then. No computers or football fields or baseball fields or swimming pools. No connecting to other students around the world or excelled classes or foreign languages or guidance counselors and on and on. Just a plain building with kids of all ages clumped together. And when their school day was over there were no sports or after-school activities. Activities were actually chores that were waiting for them at home or out in the barn. They did their chores and helped out without question-sort of like Little House on the Prairie. Of course mothers were home and dinner was cooking. Kids weren't distracted by cell phones or texting. Neither were their parents.
Sometimes that all sounds better than where we are at today. But then the grass is always greener-right??
The one-room schoolhouse they attended was up the road from where they lived-down a side road just as it curved by a bunch of maples. The creek that ran behind their farmhouse ran behind the school as well. The school is long gone but the maples are still there. Sometimes I go down that old country road. I slow down before that turn; imagining exactly where that school sat and imagining my mother and her sisters walking along that very road. If this is the school-then this is where my parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents bought the desks, books, and chalkboards for me and my cousins for our chicken coop clubhouse.
Looking at the picture I think how far we've come in educating our children. Some of that is good and some of that isn't. How simple it all looked back then. No computers or football fields or baseball fields or swimming pools. No connecting to other students around the world or excelled classes or foreign languages or guidance counselors and on and on. Just a plain building with kids of all ages clumped together. And when their school day was over there were no sports or after-school activities. Activities were actually chores that were waiting for them at home or out in the barn. They did their chores and helped out without question-sort of like Little House on the Prairie. Of course mothers were home and dinner was cooking. Kids weren't distracted by cell phones or texting. Neither were their parents.
Sometimes that all sounds better than where we are at today. But then the grass is always greener-right??
Great story! I went to a one room school house for kindergarden & first grade before being bused three miles into to town to a brand new elementary school. Even though I am sixty-two, I can still remember walking to school, sometimes hearing the bell be rung. It was only K-3, after that you went to the next little community that had a little bit bigger two room school house. I can remember all being in the one room, with four rows of desk. When the teacher was instruction the second & third grades, the first grade students were helping the younger kindergarden kids. A lot of good memories.
ReplyDeleteI wondered how a teacher handled the various grades in one room. I live in an area where there is a considerable Amish population and every time I go by one of their schools I want to stop and go inside!
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