OLD TIMER’S EARLY LEARNING By Norris Chambers When the family moved to My mother also told some wild tales
about the little country school she attended. She described good teachers and
bad teachers but received a good education. She told about a boy who rode a
mule into the school building while classes were in session. Apparently that
created quite a commotion. Some of the students were scared, some thought it
was funny and the teacher was infuriated. The boy was expelled for the rest of
the year! When I started my schooling in 1925
things were considerably different. We had grades and received report cards!
The year before I started to school my father bought a reading book for me that
the first grade was using. It was entitled Will and Mae and told about those kids’ exploits in simple language. My mother
taught me how to read it and I was ready for the coming school term. I suffered
a severe shock. That year they changed the first grade reader to one called Baby
Ray. I looked at the strange
book and told the teacher, “I don’t know how to read this book!” Her reply was very simple: “You’ll
learn.” I did learn and I soon knew about Baby Ray and his adventures. There
was also spelling, penmanship, language and arithmetic. There was a grade
listed on the report card called “deportment” – The next year I went to a much
smaller school where the little one room school had grades one through eight.
Obviously one grade could not receive too much attention but the year I spent
there in the second grade I learned enough to make the rest of my schooling
very easy. I returned to the larger school the next year and I already knew the
third grade work and much of that in the fourth and fifth grade. All country
schools had more than one grade in a room. I was fortunate enough to always
have a higher grade in my room and I stayed at least a year ahead by listening
to the next grade. One of the things I learned in the
second grade was the multiplication tables. We had to memorize them through the
12’s. One of the third grade boys asked the teacher why he had to learn the
tables. He didn’t know how he would ever use them. She answered, “Suppose you
wanted to buy eleven pigs at four dollars each, how much would it cost. You
already know from your tables – four times eleven is forty-four. You will also
find many problems in higher grades that require the tables to solve.” Another thing we had to memorize was
the table of plusses. Nine plus six is fifteen, twelve plus eight is twenty and
so on. This has proven to be invaluable for many, many years. Adding columns of
figures becomes very easy when you know without using your fingers how to add a
nine or a seven. There are practical uses for
algebra, geometry and even trigonometry as we grow older and find needs for more
mathematical answers. The old schools taught us what we needed to know for the
periods in which they were taught. The same teaching continues today with
additions to contribute to the understanding of nuclear science and advanced
computer technology. First graders of the future will be
issued shirt pocket computers instead of books like Will and Mae and Baby
Ray. The pocket calculator has
replaced tedious work with a pencil. What do you think will replace the
calculator? Maybe it’s best not to worry about
these things and have fun by turning a fresh caught mouse loose in a fancy
dining establishment at the height of the dinner hour! That can lead to real
fun! |