Back to School Part Two – Putting One-room Schools to the Test

By Bennett Owen

Credit: Pictoscribe - Moseying Back to The Wild 

I don’t know about their self-esteem but it appears the rural eighth graders ‘back in the day’ actually knew a thing or two when they left those creaky clapboard temples of learning. For a truly humbling experience, check out this document that purports to be the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in Salina, Kansas.

Credit: alansheaven

The actual exam is extensive but for brevity’s sake I’ve provided a quick overview along with some helpful hints:

Grammar:
Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.  – I fail that with every post at My-West.

Arithmetic:
Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent. - I find absolutely no interest in that.

US History: 
Give the epochs into which US History is divided.  – That’s easy. The pre and post wireless Internet eras.

Orthography:  (yes, I had to look it up too!)
What are the following and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?  - I think a diphthong is something Lady Gaga wears.

Geography:
Describe the movements of the earth. -  That’s what happened the first time I kissed Rita Grand.

Health:
Where are saliva, gastric juice and bile secreted?  -  Hey, let’s keep Washington, DC out of this.

Credit: JohnsonCreekHistory.com

At any rate, here are some people who most likely could have passed that test with flying colors:

Herbert Hoover  - the first US president born west of the Mississippi, Hoover attended a one-room schoolhouse in West Branch, Iowa – He spent much of his youth with his pioneer uncle in Newberg, Oregon.

Laura Ingalls Wilder – Attended a one-room school in De Smet, South Dakota, the basis for her Little House on the Prairie books.  She also taught at one-room schools beginning at age 17.

Grant Wood – One of America’s best-known painters taught at a one-room school in Iowa in the early 1900s.

Clifford E. Paine – designer and engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge attended Peachbelt School in southwest Michigan.

The Graduates of the “One-Armed School” – The wives of atomic scientists transported to remote Los Alamos, New Mexico in the early 1940s, started up a one-room school in a log cabin for their kids.  Early estimates put the pupils’ average IQ at 150.  The local joke was that anybody who couldn’t make the grade at school could always qualify for a job at Los Alamos labs.

And finally, if a kid has to go to school, it really should be in places like these:

6. Mesa Schoolhouse, Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

Credit: DQmountaingirl

Credit: DQmountaingirl

5. The Old Schoolhouse, Jefferson, Colorado – Built around 1901

Credit: wikipedia.org

4. Schoolhouse with the Hearst Castle in the Background.

Credit: KatRya

2. Grafton Schoolhouse, near Zion Park, Utah – One of the most photographed structures in the western US.

Credit: motionblur

1. Calf-A, Dell, Montana – Originally built as a schoolhouse in 1903, it is now a café with some of the best pies in the western United States.

Credit: My-West.com

Credit: My-West.com

Send us your one-room school photos and anecdotes!

Credit: t.magnum

Back to School Part Two – Putting One-room Schools to the Test

Back to School: A Room With A Few

By Bennett Owen

A room with a few:

- Pupils

- A few desks

Fruita Schoolhouse, Capital Reef, Utah. Credit: Bills Travel Journal

- A few books

Credit: My-West.com

- A few grades – as in one through eight

Oldest schoolhouse in Montana, it served duty in Twin Bridges, Montana, but now resides in Nevada City, Montana. Credit: oldmantravels

- A few outdoor privies – one for boys, one for girls

And lots and lots of borderline juvenile delinquency. A basic fixture of our western heritage, the one room school is truly a trip down memory lane ... though to hear my Uncles tell it, it was more like a five- mile slog through heavy snow, muddy spring roads and untold, often cunningly creative diversions.  As the old saying goes, “in my day we had to walk 20 miles to school, uphill both ways.” And getting there was half, if not all the fun.

Fruita Schoolhouse, Capital Reef, Utah Credit: Billstraveljournal

The accounts of rural school life are surprisingly uniform. Teachers were often little older than the students they were instructing, the older kids tutored the youngsters, who benefited from listening in on the drills they would be subjected to a year or two down the road. There was also the added workload of fetching firewood, toting drinking water and myriad other daily chores.

Adobetown Schoolhouse, Virginia City, Montana. Credit: Sunni J.

It’s what the kids were up to when the teacher wasn’t looking that really makes for interesting reading, including some rambunctious boys who cornered a packrat and thought it would be funny to put it in the teacher’s desk drawer. Here’s my Uncle Jules with ‘the rest of the story …’

“After about an hour as the schoolroom became quiet, Miss Kelley could hear a noise in her desk drawer. Upon opening it out jumped the packrat. The teacher shrieked and literally had a heart attack! Aunt Wilda was summoned for first aid and Dr. Lee was called. Miss Kelley did survive but I don’t know the fate of those two boys.”

It’s strange how my uncle Robert’s eyes twinkle when hearing this story.

Polaris schoolhouse, Montana Credit: Montanaheritageproject

One-room schools were often a ‘Room With a Pew’ as well, doing double duty as a Sunday go to meetin‘ place of worship.

One-room schoolhouse and church is now a Daughter’s of the Pioneers Museum Torrey, Utah. Credit: My-West.com

In 1919 there were 190-thousand one-room schools operating across America. That has dwindled to about 400 as this school year gets underway. In our neck of the sagebrush, the Polaris School still opens sporadically … whenever a dozen school-age kids or more are living in the valley.

Sulu schoolhouse, Sulu, Montana Credit: Patrick_h

Do your homework because tomorrow’s post includes an eighth grade graduation test from 1895. The results WILL shock you. Hell, I could barely understand the questions!  In the meantime, here’s how one western teacher handled her unruly students: