The Rural Voice, 1986-09, Page 18Andrew Dixon: "The timetable was based on the
needs of the farm and so the school closed during
the two summer months to free the children to
help."
bundles I had, I told her. And
when she asked me how many that
made, I quickly added them up
because I could count by tens.
I had the usual equipment of the
school beginner: a slate, a
washrag, four slate pencils, and a
primer book, a total investment of
15 cents — 4 cents for the book, 10
cents for the slate, and 1 cent for
four slate pencils. We were given a
new letter each day and we filled
our slates with them, sounding
them as we did so. I do remember
when we put c a t side by side and
sounded the letters to make cat and
how from that time on I could
write any word I wanted to, pro-
viding you didn't care about the
spelling. Likewise numbers were
introduced along with such terms
as units, tens, and thousands. I
don't know how fast we progress-
ed but I do know that by the time
we left public school we had quite
a variety of skills. We had read a
Shakespearean play, we had
studied Canadian and British
history, we knew a bit of
geography and science and a bit of
arithmetic. We had taken grammar
and although we professed to hate
it, 1 rather like parsing. While
words such as assertive, conjunc-
tive, and modifying did not mean
much because 1 didn't know their
roots, they were names and I
remembered them. I think that,
like most children, I amassed a lot
of knowledge but not a lot of
understanding. But then I think
that this is a correct and logical
development. Today's idea is to
create understanding without
knowledge and to me it is not only
a fallacy, but unattainable.
By way of diversion our school
day was broken into four time
periods. We had classes from 9
a.m. until 10:45 and then had a
break which we called morning
recess. School resumed at 11:00
and lasted till luncheon break at 12
noon. At 1:00 p.m. we again
assembled and carried on till 2:45
and then had afternoon recess for
15 minutes. At this time the begin-
ners were allowed to go home and
the older ones droned on till 4 p.m.
We had little or no supervision
during recess. At noon the teacher
went home to lunch. Some of the
children who lived nearby also
went home and the rest of us ate
our sandwiches and played. Any
equipment that we had was sup-
plied by us. We might round up an
india-rubber ball to play auntie -
high -over and with revenue from a
school concert we might buy a
football, but generally speaking we
played games involving tagging,
such as pump -pump -pull-away,
prisoner's base, and duck -on -the -
rock. When the pond froze we slid
— few of us had skates and
nobody had skis. When there was
snow we made snowmen, igloos,
and caves.
I don't think that we were bad.
Certainly there was no vandalism.
The school door was never locked.
Two students had the job of
sweeping for which they tendered
at the beginning of the New Year,
and one boy had the job of tending
the fires. It just would not have oc-
curred to us that it would be ex-
citing to break the windows or
mess up the notebooks with ink.
One trick that I do remember
trying to carry out backfired. Our
teacher at that time was Miss
Bloomfield, and aside from the
fact that she was teacher I had no
strong feelings for or against her.
She boarded at a neighbouring
farm and went there for lunch,
which involved a walk of about a
quarter of a mile. The gate most
directly on her route opened to the
road side where there was a ditch
about three feet deep. By veering
to the left side she could cross it at
a place where the banks were
gradual, but directly ahead the
banks were quite steep. At the time
of our brainwave it was winter.
The ditch had blown full of snow
and a path that had been made
over the ditch was being used
regularly. Thus one noon hour a
few of us proceeded to undermine
this path so that anyone using it
would cause its collapse and would
end up waist -deep in the ditch.
We did a masterly job carting
the snow some distance away and
scattering it. We also covered the
hole that we had dug to undermine
the path and then dispersed to
watch the teacher tumble into an
undignified situation.
We were quite annoyed to see
two little girls run down the road
to meet the teacher and to tell her
what we had done. She avoided
our trap and took a safe route.
Two days later the school inspec-
tor, P. J. Thompson, arrived. Our
18 THE RURAL VOICE