The Rural Voice, 2005-09, Page 54SOMETHING LOST,
SOMETHING GAINED
Students in todag's schools have access to more
specialized time from teachers and better facilities
but something was lost when the old one -room
school houses closed. There was a sense of
fellowship in the communitg.
By Barbara Weiler
Today the old one -room school
houses sit abandoned or have been
converted to homes but once they
were the centre of their community.
1
`l. '1
As the hot summer days drift
on towards autumn, we are
reminded that for many of us
the year begins not in frosty January
but in the warm and hazy September
sunshine. When the big yellow
school bus stops at the gate for the
first day of school, it heralds a new
start, a re -alignment, a time to re-
organize the household to fit the
50 THE RURAL VOCE
'S'"^Yiat
latest'schedules; new clothes, lunch
box -es and school bags; fresh
excitement for everyone from chubby
kindergarten kids to blase seniors in
high school and yes, teachers, bus
drivers, and custodians. The
apprehension spills over to the rest of
the family too as parents and
grandparents send their offspring off
to unknown classrooms with hopes
for happiness and success.
The occasion may prompt the
older generation, determined to pass
on their wisdom to their
grandchildren, to tell stories of their
own school dys in an effort. I
suppose, to persuade children to
appreciate the opportunities they
have.
Recently a student asked me with
a wry grin "And how many miles did
you walk to school. barefoot, in the
winter?"
Her grandmother had been telling
stories of her youth. "I'm tired of
hearing how much harder it was
when she was a girl." she added.
Somehow the point had been lost or
obscured. and she had only got the
message that the youth of to -day are
wimps in grandmother's opinion.
The truth of the matter is that the
changes in education. especially in
rural areas in the latter half of the
20th century are mind-boggling. and
we would like our children and
grandchildren to know about that.
How strange it is as I sit at my
computer, the world at my fingertips.
to think that 1 learned to write with
straight pen and ink in a one -room.
red -brick schoolhouse with 18
students at most. taught by one
teacher for all the elementary grades.
Point of view seems to edit out the
parts of our history that fail to
reinforce our own particular picture
of the past. Some people' focus on
the poverty and deprivation of it all.
They talk about the outhouses
located in the woodshed behind the
school. one on each side of the wood
storage area. freezing cold in the
winter, smelly and inhabited by
hornets in the summer. They tell of
water for drinking and hand washing,
pumped from the hand pump in the
yard into a bucket that was placed on
a bench at the back of the room. They
describe the chipped enamel dipper
with the red handle used to fill our
individual drinking cups and the
huge wood furnace in the corner, into
whose belly the teacher fed enormous
chunks of hardwood at recess.
Teachers had a difficult task to do.
juggling as many as eight grades in
one room, often accomplished by the
older ones helping the younger, more
recently known as peer tutoring.
Those of us who wax nostalgic
about the good old days may see it