Sitting in fields or hidden by trees, abandoned to the weeds and brush without a house or farm nearby, the one and two-room schools seen on country drives along the side roads and lesser highways of our district are reminders of another world.
Some have been transformed into homes. Others are falling into increasing disrepair, while the occasional few have been rescued by community members determined to ensure that a few remnants of our past survive. What stories await inside the walls of those schools, if a curious passersby could open their doors and venture back into those carefree days? If visitors could sit awhile on the benches, often made by students’ family members, get cozy warm beside the wood stove, conscientiously stoked by the senior lads in the class, and listen to the school day, reminiscing of early generations of those communities, what would they learn about a bygone era of education?
Perhaps one of the first things to catch a visitor’s attention would be the important role transportation, or more accurately, the lack thereof, played in the formation of community schools. Roads in rural areas bore no resemblance to the smooth, paved, well-tended ones visitors are familiar with today. Roads long ago were rough, often impassable in bad weather or early spring and completely snow covered in the winter. Community schools were built to serve students who lived within walking distance.
Jack Bradley of Seguin Township remembers skiing to school in the winter while his wife, Ruth, recalls that on bad weather days her father would hitch up the team of horses and give her a ride. “Most days we walked to school,” she remembered, laughing. It was not uncommon for children to walk barefoot to school, saving their shoes for more important occasions.
What would the visitor find inside the schoolhouse? Yesterday’s schools did not come equipped with computers, televisions or any electronic equipment. Usually the building consisted of one large room with a platform at one end for the teacher’s desk. The school was heated with a wood stove and students sat at benches and desks often built by their families. Teaching aids were few and far between, often limited to one or two maps and a few books. In some instances, books were so scarce that there was only one book for each grade. Some schools couldn’t even boast a working clock!
In Then and Now, West Parry Sound Schools 1865 – 1981, Hazel Moyer recalls: “… in the Glendenning School there was no time piece, so the teacher had to depend on the Glendennings who lived further up the road, to hang a piece of white material on the clothes line at noon and again at 1 o’clock.”
Thomas Lundy, a student in the Foley area remembered that, “there was no clock in the school. When a beam of sunlight coming in the window reached a notch cut in the edge of the teacher’s desk, school was let out for the day.”
Perhaps the visitor would wonder what today’s students would make of a school that didn’t even have a working clock, never mind a cell phone to play with.
What did the students of yesteryear learn? Perhaps if the visitor closed his or her eyes, he would hear the drone of children reciting their times tables or poetry. Memory work was especially important in the school of yesteryear, and many teachers placed a high value on a student’s ability to remember and recite works by such great Victorian and Edwardian poets as Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats. While most schools stuck to the basics when it came to a curriculum, the celebrated three “R’s” – reading, writing and arithmetic, subjects like “household science”, music and agriculture were added.
“Our teacher would sing to us,” Jack Bradley remembered. “At lunch she would read us stories. I remember that she had the Anne of Green Gables books and read them to us.”
If he or she was still listening, perhaps the visitor would hear the clang of the metal door of the stove being opened and closed as the senior students fed the fire with logs they might have split at recess time. Perhaps he or she might hear the sound of children stirring something on the stove, smell the aroma of stew or soup. Lunch was much more relaxed in those days. Teachers did not have a stop watch in hand to ensure that their students were tossed out of the classroom within the 20 minutes allowed to wolf down a sandwich. No, in those days, children often helped to cook their own lunch.
“Boys caught rabbits on the way to school in winter and when the rabbits were prepared for cooking they were put into a large pot over a big, old box stove,” recalled Phyllis McEwen, a student at Middle River School in McKellar. “At the right time, vegetables were added and by noon the rabbit stew was ready for lunch. All the pupils took from home for lunch was bread and butter.”
In some schools parents took turns supplying a soup bone for a hearty soup. It was not uncommon for students to plant their own vegetable garden. Jack Bradley remembers planting radishes and green onions, while others planted flowers and vegetables that would be stored for use in the winter. Students served the meal and were responsible for washing the dishes afterwards. Many students remember bringing sandwiches and a bottle of milk.
School started at 9 a.m. and ended at 4 p.m. In the fall, when families needed every hand they had to make sure crops were harvested, attendance at schools often dropped significantly. In many cases, schools only operated for six months of the year with some open only from January until June.
If the visitor listened very hard, he might hear the sound of a pointer smacking down on a teacher’s desk. Teachers dealt with different challenges than those facing today’s educators. Most of them had to board with the families of their students. Jack Bradley recalled that the teacher for the Blackwater Lake School lived with his family. Shirley Jordan, also from Seguin, remembered that teachers for the Edgington School boarded with the White Family.
“The teacher would go home (to the White’s) for lunch,” recalled Ruth Bradley, who attended the Edgington School. “The kids would scramble for the best pieces of chalk and write on the board while she was gone, until she caught them one day.”
Students sat in rows with each row representing a grade. There was no junior or senior kindergarten. Children started school at six. Many schools offered grade 9 and 10 to students, however, pupils attempting to complete their certificate were expected to work independently as much as possible as teachers frequently did not have much time to help them. Although some smaller rural schools had an attendance of between 12 and 15 students, others such as the Orrville school, had upwards of 50 students. This was a huge amount of work for one teacher!
Like their students, teachers had to walk to school, sometimes at a considerable distance. Salaries were extremely modest with most teachers at the turn-of-the-century earning approximately $200 per year. Qualifications for teaching were very modest. A “third class” teaching certificate could be had by a student who completed one year of high school and a fall term of what was then called “model school”. Even as late as the early sixties, students who completed high school and a year of “Teacher’s College” were able to find work as teachers.
Teachers were expected to set a good example for their students, even though their students sometimes included great, hulking young men with nothing better to do.
“The ages of the students who first attended the school ranged up to 24 years,” Mrs. Marvel Jackson recalled in her stories about Maple Island School. “Some of them were young men with grown beards. Since there was scarcely any work the first year the school was built, the young men attended school until they could find employment…”
Of course, teachers in those days had weapons not available to today’s educators – namely the strap! In fact, this mode of discipline was in use until 1962 when it was banned from the classroom. Teachers often thought nothing of using whatever came to hand to bring an erring student to heel. A pointer or hefty book could serve as well as the strap. Shirley Jordan recalled that teachers were not shy about hurling pieces of chalk at an uncooperative pupil.
Just how tough it was for teachers, is reflected in the fact that teachers frequently left their positions. In fact, some stayed for as little as a few days before leaving, often shocked by their working and living conditions or the sheer workload involved.
All was not work, however! Teacher and pupils marked the passing seasons with celebrations like Arbor Day in May, a time when students cleaned the school and its grounds as well as planting trees. In the winter students manufactured sleds out of barrel staves for hair-raising trips down snowy hills and in the early summer, there was always time to pick wild berries for an extra treat at lunch. Christmas concerts were a huge event. Shirley Jordan recalled that the Orrville School was not big enough to accommodate all of the guests for concerts so the municipal town hall was used instead. She remembers the stables at the back of the building for the horses and the “outhouses”.
“Someone would always have to go to the bathroom just before the concert and they would find themselves wading through the snow in their good stockings and shoes to get to the outhouse,” she recalled, laughing.
Jack Bradley remembered that villagers from Orrville walked all the way to the Blackwater School for a Christmas concert. It was the highlight of the year with students beginning to practice as early as November.
Perhaps if the visitor leaned back and listened very, very hard he or she could hear the sound of singing, the excitement of pupils in their Sunday best, the rustle of clothing and the hushed talk of parents in the audience.
The shared hardships and shared pleasures are the memories students recall most fondly. It is this shared experience and attachment that prompted a group of former students to collectively save their school on Swords Road. Together they hold a fundraising “pie sale” every summer to raise enough money to maintain the building, a responsibility that has been transmitted to children and grandchildren of families like the Klose family and the White family.
If the visitor would linger for just a few minutes longer he would hear the sound of the teacher’s bell signaling the end of the day and hear the shuffle of children taking their coats and hats and mittens from the pegs lining the back walls of the school. He or she would hear the clang of lunch buckets and the excited conversation as students accompany the teacher out the door and on their way home. Then silence would fall.
And the visitor would become conscious of the sounds of a highway outside, of the cell phone vibrating in his coat pocket and he (or she) would leave that “other world” for a very different one!
Old School
Still in great shape is the 103-year-old school house on Swords Road in Orrville.
User Comments
