Around the Table - Published: Friday, April 4, 2008 5:42 PM CDT
Life magazine features Pecatonica one-room schoolhouse.
Many people will still remember the
excitement Life Magazine brought to this area October 1946. That year, a
one-room schoolhouse in Pecatonica got top billing in the magazine.
One of the first graders, Charles Buntjer, 6, made the front cover as he
laboriously printed “Puff” in his first-grade workbook. Check the last
photo of Chuck 60 years later living in San Francisco!
Life Magazine so vividly captured the memory of that day in words and pictures
so that 50 years later, we feel as if we were there. Bob Wachlin brought in a
copy of the magazine.
The first paragraph paints the entire picture for us:
“Nancy Fische of the second grade was absent the day the school picture above
was taken, but except for her, some playground equipment and two privies which
are out of the picture, you are looking at the entire personnel and physical
assets of District School 94 near Pecatonica, Ill.”
The writer comments that this was “if
not the best one-room school in the country, it was certainly one of the
best.”
They gave credit to the schoolmarm, Miss Erna Meyer, for the 37 years she taught
in rural schools, 26 of them in Pecatonica. She was paid about $1,500 a year at
that time.
These one-room schoolteachers were multi-tasking way back then. The magazine
describes her teaching day to that of a juggler. Miss Meyer, for example,
started the day getting all six grades going n more or less simultaneously.
The seventh graders were given a study
problem. The first graders were started crayoning. The second grade was at the
blackboard doing arithmetic, while the fifth grade composed a letter.
“With the seventh grade studying, the first grade coloring, the second grade
figuring, and the fifth grade writing, Erna has time to check homework with the
third grade, after assigning some grading in geography to the sixth grade.”
“With all of this going on each day, she also was expected to plan study
courses, order books and supplies, give special attention to pupils who needed
it, and to keep an eye on the schoolhouse roof to see that it doesn’t spring a
leak.”
That was indeed multi-tasking and here
we thought we invented it in the year 2000.
There’s a great deal of history of one-room schoolhouses in this area at the
Stephenson County Historical Museum, as well as a one-room schoolhouse on the
grounds.
Teachers who taught in one-room schoolhouses found that their students learned
the basics very well. What they might have missed in the third and fourth grade,
they later heard and picked up on in the later grades as they listened to other
classes.
These teachers also kept the fire going
in the pot-bellied stove, swept the floors and cleaned the blackboards n or had
some help from the students in a few of these tasks.
One Stephenson County schoolmarm once told me she had her students bring a
potato to school, which she would place on the stove, to cook a “hot lunch”
at noon.
The October day at the Pecatonica School in the photo essay shows the students
at their desks. The next photo shows them reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
In the next row of pictures, the first
graders are sending a letter to Mr. Puff, students at the blackboard doing
simple sums, students listening to a lecture and then a reading session with
students and the last on that page of a boy discussing his blackboard
composition.
On the final page of the essay, we see young Homer Meiers, a seventh grader on a
bicycle, then three second graders carrying their lunches to school, and seventh
grade twins, Kenneth and Keith Fische, on a horse.
The magazine’s photo essay on the one-room schoolhouse concludes with a large
photo showing recess at the school. The first two grades are given a
15-minute break. After this, classes resumed until noon and had a one-hour lunch
break.
The youngest students go home at 3:30 p.m.; the older ones at 4 p.m. Then the
teacher, corrects papers and goes home around 5 p.m. What a wonderful legacy
these teachers left behind.
Stories of one-room schoolhouse teachers may be found that the Stephenson County
Historical Museum. In the days of readin’, writin’ and ’rithmetic, they
got their lessons for life.
Olga Gize Carlile is a columnist for The Journal-Standard. She may be reached at ocarlile@journalstandard.com.
And here I am over 60 years later living in San Francisco on the 28th floor of the Fox Plaza, a high rise in the middle of downtown! Can you believe it, all the schooling I received during those first informative years in a one-room school house did me a service for which I am thankful for. It gave me the knowledge to enter the computer field and went from IBM punch cards to setting up Internet Web Sites for major corporations.
Below is a view from my living room and bedroom. I have a six foot by 32 foot balcony across my entire apartment and every day, enjoy viewing the different vistas of fog, sun and moon light over the San Francisco Bay!
Chuck Buntjer ~ 1946
Chuck Buntjer ~ 2008
