“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” – Robert Frost
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – When I was an educator it was always fun to take a field trip to the Schoolhouse Museum in Lower Lake.
The museum “lives” in the 1877 Lower Lake Grammar School. My fourth graders' eyes grew wide with surprise when learning about school days in the olden days.
An education in rural Lake County typically went up to the eighth grade, until the early 20th century.
For a more comprehensive, or secondary education students would need to travel to Lakeport's private academy or similar establishments.
The one-room school house was de rigueur for students living in the southern portion of Lake County's Mayacamas Mountains, whose parents worked at the quicksilver mines, to the northernmost areas, near what is now the Mendocino Forest.
The iconic one-room schoolhouse was surely a challenge for one teacher to instruct grades one through eight. The teacher needed to pass a qualifying exam, and it was rare for her to hold a college degree.
It was characteristic for a teacher to be an unmarried female, who would then give up her career after marriage.
Instruction, which was for a shorter period then – about 132 days long, as compared with today's school year of 182 days – included the “three Rs”: reading, writing and arithmetic.
School years were shorter then to accommodate the harvest, since many hands made light work.
As there was no such thing as a gel pen, a Smart Board or a white board back in the day, pupils were expected to work out their sums on a piece of slate.
Slates could be spit upon by pupils and wiped off, and slates were practically indestructible. Slate was much more economical than the use of paper.
Typically, the youngest children were learning their ABCs and, hence, were called “abecedarians.” It was standard procedure for the abecedarians to learn their ABCs when they sat in the front of the classroom, with the older, taller students sitting in the back rows.
During recess, known as “nooning,” the children could play games such as “Annie Over” or “Graces.”
Discipline could be harsh in the 19th century. Depending on the infraction and the child's age, punishment could include anything from holding a book for a length of time with arms held out, getting rapped with a ruler, standing in the corner or worse.
Since there was a woodstove in most one-room schoolhouses this was an additional job to accomplish – that of keeping the classroom warm enough in winter months. Teachers had to get the fire going each morning, and older pupils could bring in the wood and kindling.
Students usually walked several miles to reach their school establishment, and it was up to them to remember to carry their lunches, sometimes in metal pails, to school with them, as no school lunches were provided back then. Lunches often included an apple, biscuit and homemade preserves and some meat.
A water pump provided fresh water then, often with a single tin cup which was shared by all.
For more information visit one of our great local museums, and while you are there pick up Lake County Museum Curator Antone Pierucci's fantastic book called “Lake County Schoolhouses.”
Kathleen Scavone, M.A., is a retired educator, potter, writer and author of “Anderson Marsh State Historic Park: A Walking History, Prehistory, Flora, and Fauna Tour of a California State Park” and “Native Americans of Lake County.” She also writes for NASA and JPL as one of their “Solar System Ambassadors.” She was selected “Lake County Teacher of the Year, 1998-99” by the Lake County Office of Education, and chosen as one of 10 state finalists the same year by the California Department of Education.
Lake County Time Capsule: School life in the good ol' days
- Kathleen Scavone
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