HISTORICAL COMMENTS BY GEORGE CHEVALLIER 9-8-12

School Days

People remember their grade school days in different ways. These are usually the years from when they were between 5 and 13. They have taken a much different approach to teaching than years ago. A hundred years ago there was only one teacher for all grades with around 25 children making up the student body. These were one room schools with very few amenities. The children still managed to learn and became the backbone of America. Now with all the trappings and electronics in the classroom, the children seem to be less educated when the school system finally awards them a diploma. The basics of reading, writing and arithmetic have fallen by the wayside to make room for the time required to make them eligible to enter the computer age.

I went through St. Francis and remember it well. Every month we had to take home a manila envelope that my mother would put $2 in and I would return it to the nun the next day. At the time, which was the early 1950’s, the nuns were paid the whopping sum of $40 a month. They also got to live there and get their meals there, but there were no Mercedes or Continentals parked outside as you see today outside the schools. They had something that is missing from today’s educators. They had a vocation. Along with our religious education, we practiced the times tables and penmanship for an hour at a time. Did you ever try to make “O’s” for an hour at a time?

About 10 years ago there was talk among the educational fraternity that they were going to do away with cursive writing because typing on a computer was all they had to learn.

The teachers of today for the most part are disciplinarians. They have to be because of the lack of respect shown by the students. This reflects the fact that no discipline was instilled in them at home. If they have over 25 children in a class they consider it crowded. In some years at St. Francis, the class size was between 60 and 70 students, comprising three classes, with only one nun for all three classes.

The Rockawalkin School House on the grounds of Pemberton Elementary School shows how a one room school looked. There were many of these schools up until about 1940. The teachers were usually unmarried young women who had graduated from high school. And remember, a high school education was only 9 years before 1902. A 10th year was added in 1902 and the 11th was added in 1906. The 12 year education we have today didn’t come about until 1949. The education of a teacher in 1900 was that she assist a teacher in a one room school for only one year. They could then obtain a teaching position on their own.

The discipline has been taken out of schools to the point that children of 9 or 10 know nothing physical is going to happen to them so they can act up any way they want. At St. Francis, the fear of that 15 inch Westcott ruler or the hand of a nun kept many a child in line. Corporal punishment has gone the way of discipline. “Spare the rod and spoil the child”.