Lessons from one-room schoolhouse are worth remembering

Stepping out of the gray, light rainy weather at the Washburn-Norlands Living History Center’s Pie Social & Pie Baking Contest in Livermore into a small mudroom at the center’s old one-room schoolhouse, my girlfriend, Eileen, and I have no idea we’re stepping back in time 164 years.

The walls beside the open door into the schoolhouse have unfinished pine boards attached with a dozen black iron double coat hooks on each board.

A matronly woman wearing a black bonnet, black-and-white calico blouse, and long black skirt peers around the door, welcomes us and invites us into the classroom.

The woman introduces herself as Mrs. Howard, school teacher. She asks us to sit — girls on the benches to her right, boys on left side benches. “In the classroom,” Mrs. Howard says, looking directly at me, “scholars (students) remove their hats.” I’m caught off-guard. Removing my ballcap, I inwardly kick myself for not doing so without being asked. I know better.

The room has a small woodstove centered with plain wood benches on either side. A teacher’s desk, built for standing, not sitting, is at the schoolroom front. A small wood bench, back close to the woodstove, faces the teacher’s desk.

Scholars refer to the teacher either as Mrs. Howard or M’am.

Motioning to her impeccable cursive white chalk handwriting on the slate blackboard mounted behind her, Mrs. Howard tells us today is Saturday, September 9, 1853. She reads aloud the general thought for the day, written below today’s date: “Dare to advocate the right.”

The schoolhouse is in District 7 of 18. Each schoolhouse is built near crossroads for easy access. Scholars attend classes six days a week, eight hours a day, with plenty of no-school days for children to be home helping with essential family chores.

Through 12-pane double hung glass windows along the school walls, I see the rain is letting up. There’s blue sky among the clouds. Mrs. Howard tells us about the scholars who learn here — from age four until they’re teenagers. There are no grade levels, no 1st through 12th grades.

School is for learning essential life skills of productive people. It’s a system where scholars advance based only on their mastery of subjects. I can be on book two for reading/writing, still struggling with arithmetic book one.

Scholars bring their own books to school. Many can’t afford books. Among scholars who have schoolbooks, they might not all be the same books. So, scholars learn orally through listening, comprehending, remembering, and recitation.

Mrs. Howard holds an 1852 book of poems, saying, “We are going to recite poetry.” I stand in front of the class and read two verses written by a Greek poet. Theocritus, I think.

Eileen reads “The Blackberry Girl,” author unknown. She stands front and center facing Mrs. Howard, while “toeing the mark.” That is, standing with shoe tips aligned against a floorboard edge.

The poems have solid moral lessons: Live a meaningful life with no regrets at death. Or, share what you have with others who have less.

Other scholars have now wandered into our schoolroom.

Mrs. Howard challenges us to solve mental math problems 1853 scholars answered. But the listening, comprehending, remembering, and recitation skills needed to solve the more complex mental math problems? No one in the schoolroom has them. We can’t even fully remember the last example Howard reads, never mind remembering it and solving the math!

I left Mrs. Howard’s schoolroom respecting how and what was taught — and why. I left respecting the Maine kids, the scholars, who learned in that environment. And I’m thinking of the valuable elements of one-room schoolhouse teaching we’ve since lost.

Scott K. Fish has served as a communications staffer for Maine Senate and House Republican caucuses, and was communications director for Senate President Kevin Raye. He founded and edited AsMaineGoes.com and served as director of communications/public relations for Maine’s Department of Corrections until 2015. He is now using his communications skills to serve clients in the private sector.