“How old were you when you started school, Gran? What was it like,” asked Beth?
I thought for a minute, then continued. “In January 1904, I celebrated my seventh birthday. Ma told me I that I was old enough that I could go to school in September. I could hardly wait. I missed my older brothers and sisters as they trudged off to school every day. I was filled with excitement knowing that I would finally be able to go with them. Learning to do reading, writing, and arithmetic sounded so alluring.
By this time Colt, Rose, and Linc were finished school. They had all completed their grade eight studies. Rose was nineteen. She had gotten married the previous spring. She lived with her husband on his parents’ homestead six miles away. They were sure a happy young couple. A good match, so Ma and Pa said.
Colt was twenty-one, and Linc was seventeen. They still lived at home and helped Pa on the farm. Sometimes they picked up work off the farm when the opportunity arose. Lumbering was in its prime back then. Colt had taken his team into a lumber camp that winter. It was his third season. He went in after freeze up and stayed till the spring thaw.
Dawn, Dalt, Eva, and Newt were still in school, though, and I missed them terribly. That was Dawn’s final year. She was in grade eight. The twins were home with me, but they had a pretty tight bond and sometimes three was a crowd, as Ma often mentioned.
By the time September rolled around, Dawn and Eva had taught me to write my name and recognize a few numbers and letters. I was ready and raring to go off to school that first day. I could hardly sit still long enough to eat breakfast. As I grabbed my lunch pail and headed out with the others, I recall feeling like I was off on the adventure of a lifetime.
I remember it used to take us about half an hour to walk to school. As we walked along, some of the neighbourhood children would join us. The school was about two miles from home. It was an old one-room school house with one teacher who taught grades one through eight. There were four other children in my grade one class that first year. I knew all of them. They lived fairly close to us, and we had played together on different occasions. Of course, I knew just about all the children in the school. Most of the older children were friends with my sisters and brothers. There were probably only twenty-five children in the whole school.
Only three of us who started school together on that first day finished grade eight. One of the boys quit school after grade five. His Pa took real sick and he had to stay home to help run the farm. One of the girls didn’t return for seventh grade after her Ma died in child birth. She was the oldest daughter in the family and had to take over all of her Ma’s chores to help keep their family together. That was just the way things were done back then. Family came first, and school was fitted in after that.
Us children were fortunate. We all successfully graduated from grade eight. None of us went to continuation school, though. The closest one was over thirty miles away. We would have had to be boarded out to attend. There was no money for that. It was just not possible. There were no buses or cars back then. Horse and train travel were our only mode of transportation.
The teacher I had for grade one was a stern and humourless woman. Once I met her, I remember feeling a little nervous about being in school. I sure didn’t want to give her any cause to have to discipline me. The other children had already warned me about the strap. She would walk around the room carrying a ruler stick. If she asked you a question and you didn’t come up with the correct answer, she’d smack that ruler on your desk. That used to scare the heck out of me.
Anyways, I settled into school life quite well. I took to learning pretty fast. I had wanted to be able to read stories like the other children could. Most of our studying involved reading, writing, and arithmetic. We learned some history and geography as well. It was enjoyable to learn about things in different parts of Canada and other places. Memory work was a big thing back then, too. Every week we had a spelling bee. Each grade was given words to study. We had to know their definition, how to use them in a sentence, and how to spell them properly. I guess you could say I did quite well academically. I was always at the top of my class, but that’s not saying much considering that there were only five of us in my grade and only three in my final years.
Poetry memorization was another form of memory work. We would study a poem to try and understand its meaning. Then we had to memorize it and recite it in front of the class. Sometimes the teacher would turn it into a contest and give a prize to the person who did the best. That always made it more enticing to want to study harder.
Developing really good writing skills was a big part of school in those days. There was a lot of emphasis put on penmanship. It was often considered more important than the written content of an assignment. Learning how to hold your pencil or pen properly was part of the curriculum. That’s how important it was thought to be. People took great pride in their writing skills.
Recess was always a fun time. We’d have a game of baseball, hide “n” seek, or red rover. In the winter we had lots of fun building snow forts and having snowball fights. The older ones played with the younger ones. Mostly we all got along. Once in a while, a couple of the older boys would take to brawling. The teacher would break that up in a hurry. Usually both parties would end up getting the strap and maybe more disciplining when they got home. Ma used to remind us regularly that if we got into trouble at school there would be worse waiting for us at home.
There was one day during recess in particular I recall. It has always stuck with me. Looking back on it now I kind of get giddy, but back then I didn’t think it was so funny. The teacher had come out to use the outhouse. She hadn’t been in there more than a minute when three of the bigger boys went over and started pushing on that old outhouse. After a couple of tries, it fell right over backwards. Lordy, Lordy, what a sight! The teacher had been in there doing her business, sitting on the throne at the time. When it tipped over, her bare-butt was hanging out through the hole. She started into the hollering. Most of us children were mortified seeing that. It took some doing for her to try to get the door open and get out to pull herself back together. Some of the older girls scrambled to her aid. I’ll tell you, though, those boys sure took a good strapping. She rounded them up and gave it to them in front of the whole class. I almost felt sorry for them.” I stopped for a moment. Beth was laughing so hard tears were running down her face.
“I’m sorry, Gran. I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I shouldn’t be laughing. That was really mean of those boys, and they deserved to get the strap. But I can picture that outhouse on its side with that poor teacher’s butt sticking through. What a calamity!”
“It surely was, dear. I guess that I was just too young to see any humour in the situation. I’ll tell you about another time that mischief came into play. It was the day the teacher’s horse was let loose. There was a small shed out back of the school where the teacher would tie her horse up for the day. That way the horse was out of the hot sun and weather, and she would feed it some hay and grain in there and leave a bucket of water for it. When they were in season, I always took extra carrots or apples in my lunch for the teacher’s horse. I’d go out at lunch time and give them to him.
On this particular day, there was no horse. I ran back in and told the teacher. Well, all of us started out on a search for the runaway. Little did we know, but it had found its way home back to its own stable. We spent the whole afternoon trying to locate that dang horse. I found out months later that it had been let loose intentionally. I don’t recall if the teacher ever found out. It was kept quiet if she did.
My school years passed by pretty quickly. Monday to Friday we headed off to school. We trudged off down the road on foot, no matter what the weather. We walked in the rain, the snow, the heat, and the cold. Once in a while, one of the neighbours would be headed out somewhere with their horse and wagon and would stop to give us a ride to school or back home. We were all thankful on those occasions, especially if it was the homeward trip.
The school house was heated with wood. In the winter time, one of the older boys would be asked to be responsible to put the fire on every day. This boy was paid an “Honorarium” of $3.00 for the winter. He would have to get to school earlier than all of us so the school would have time to warm up somewhat. This same boy would have to make sure the snow was shoveled away from the front steps. On some of those cold winter days that old school house never really did warm up very much. That old potbellied stove would be just a humping, but never made much headway. Those old school houses had no insulation, and had vaulted ceilings which made them hard to heat.
The children sitting close to the stove were too hot, and the rest of us just about froze to death.
There were three different teachers who taught at our school during the eight years I attended. They were all women. We had the same teacher while I was in grade one to three. Then another teacher taught while I was in grade four and five. She quit, and we had a different teacher while I attended grades six through eight. I liked her the best. It seemed that one would get settled in to teaching us and stay for a few years. Then she would get married and quit teaching.
Back then to be a teacher, you had to complete your eighth class studies, attend four years of continuation school, then go to normal school for at least a year. Normal school is the equivalent of Teacher’s College today. Most teachers came from a different part of the countryside where higher education was more available, usually a city. She would be boarded out with one of the families in the area.
It was certainly a different time in the world back in the early twentieth century. There were no calculators, or computers, not even pens and paper as they use today. There were no libraries or surplus of books available either. We had slate boards and chalk to use in the early grades. When we got older and attended the higher grades, we had access to paper, pencils, and fountain pens. Text books were in short supply as well. Mostly we would share with someone else in the same grade. Sometimes as we got into a higher grade, we might get our own. That was because there weren’t as many children attending school to study in the higher grades.
Anyway, those school days went by pretty fast. Looking back, I feel pretty fortunate that I was able to finish grade eight. Lots of children didn’t get that privilege. I learned to read, write, and do basic figuring. It has served me well over my life. Sometimes, when I encounter young people who can’t do short math figuring in their head or spell worth a dang, I come to figuring that perhaps I got a better education way back then. Imagine that!”
“Well, you very well may have, Gran. You had to learn through memorization and you have retained the information that you learned. There weren’t any calculators or computers to do the work for you. Most kids don’t even know how to write a letter with a pen and paper anymore. They do it all on computers now, and send their messages by e-mail on the internet. Handwriting is a lost skill,” replied Beth. “That must be hard for you to comprehend. Things have certainly changed. It’s a different world than you grew up in.”
“That’s a fact, Beth. You said a mouthful,” I continue. “It’s a different world, for sure.”