Aug 20, 2006 - 02:10:52 CDT
GRAND FORKS (AP) - It's hard for today's children to wrap their heads around the notion of what school was like three generations ago, when blackboards were high tech, students drank water out of a dipper from a communal bucket and hot lunch came from the top of a pot belly stove.That seemed to be the consensus among the children who took part in School House Days last Wednesday at the Blooming 46 one-room school on the Myra Museum grounds, sponsored by the Grand Forks Historical Society.
"Some things are kind of crazy," said Ana Brakel, who will be a sixth-grader at South Middle School when Grand Forks schools open for classes this week.
After the school bell rang, students said the Pledge of Allegiance and then got a crash course about what school was like in 1930, when it was common for one teacher to preside over one room of first- through eighth-graders.
"I learned all the schools had to have the Ten Commandments and have the pictures of (Presidents) Washington and Lincoln," said Christian Feldman-Steele of Emerado. "And the books didn't have very many pictures."
In the 1930s, retired Grand Forks teacher Bonnie Cameron told the children, North Dakota required the Ten Commandments to be posted in every classroom, a law that later was struck down. The flag on display in the classroom had only 48 stars. And, yes, most classrooms had photos of Lincoln and Washington hanging on the wall.
Each child was given a 1930s-era book to read appropriate to his or her age level.
"We talked about how the books looked really different," Cameron said. "They talked about the smaller type and the not-so-many pictures."
Reading out loud was big in one-room schools, she said. Teachers often read from the classics and the stories often had a moral. On Wednesday, for instance, the children heard a story about two men walking in the woods when they encountered a bear. One man took refuge in a tree, laughing at his friend, who lay down on the ground. The bear approached the man on the ground, whispered something in his ear, and then left, after which the man in the tree came down and asked his companion: "What did the bear say to you?"
"Never trust a friend who deserts you in times of trouble," was the reply. That, said Cameron, led to a discussion about bullies.
The children also heard traditional music and how to dance a Canadian reel with music and instruction provided by Jeanne O'Neil and her daughter, Erin. Later, they played traditional games led by retired teacher Kathy Reid and had a math lesson from Helen Wheeler, also a retired teacher.
The children ate their ham and cheese sandwich, apple, cookie and pickle lunches out of new metal pails.
"I told them that most children in 1930 wouldn't have had a new pail. They would have probably have had a lard pail or something like that," Cameron said.
The children missed out on two of the most common aspects of attending a one-room school 75 years ago: walking to the school in the snow and using an outhouse. Still, they seemed to be picking up on the big picture.
"It must have been hard when you had to walk," said Carli Boushee, of East Grand Forks, Minn.
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