Ancient Education

It’s been sixty years since I was in grade school. K-9, is how it was divided. Kindergarten through the sixth was considered elementary school, and seventh through the ninth was junior high school. Our school was build in a square, with the playground in the center. It covered a whole city block, and taught about 900 kids while I was there. On the corners and in the middle were gates to enter and leave the school. This was during WWII, so there were guards on the gates making sure only children and teachers were entering the school. If parents wanted to come into the school they had to go to the main gate and be identified before they could enter.

Our classes were large by today’s standards, 40-45 in each class. We also had auditorium classes for large groups on subjects of health interests. Don’t smoke, don’t drink, type of schooling. Occasionally we had auditoruim classes just for fun, I can remember Professor Backwards who could write a word backwords as quickly as he could forward. Then after school we could attend serials if we wanted. Flash Gorden, Perils of Pauline, and Zorro.

We did play football and baseball between the classes, but there were no after school practice sessions. We just played for fun. I can remember hardly any homework, we couldn’t take the books out of the class. Sometimes we were asked to write a page on some subject. We could go home and play with our friends until supper. No television, so we read magazines, newspapers, or books, we even talked about family things and played games like monopoly.

We had a wide choice of classes beyond English, Math, Literature, History, Geography, and Physical Education, these were mandatory. Boys could take Electricity, Woodworking, or Metalworking, while the girls could take Cooking, Sewing, or Home Economics. Classes for everyone were Band, Music, Art, Typing, Social Studies, and Science.

We had time to use the playground during lunch and recess. There were several organizations that were promoted by the school, YMCA, YWCA, if you joined the “Y” you could go swimming at their facilities downtown. Don’t know much about the YWCA. Boy and Girl Scouts were discussed also. The Boy Scouts were learning to shoot rifles, 22’s, The troop I belong to went to the finals in target shooting, but didn’t win. The war, remember.

The school also had a guard organization you could join after the eighth grade. They would watch the bathrooms and halls, also guard the gates. I joined early and finally made Captain of the Guard, which gave me the priviledge of starting the flag salute each morning by blowing a whistle. Each morning we started school with a prayer, and a salute to the flag of the United States of America.

We prayed in class sometimes and always in the auditorium. Those were times of uncertainty, fear of atomic bombs, and fear of losing friends and family in the War, which many did.

Schools helped in the war effort. We collected newspapers, metal of all kinds, we put them into bins at the school. Every evening I would spend time gathering newspaper from the neighbors to put into the bins at school. All too often, I would collect money for flowers to help those who lost family in the war. Gold stars adorned a lot of windows. We all dreaded seeing the Military car in the neighborhood bringing bad news to someone.

While I am not a religious person, I have no regrets of praying in school. It was a great comfort to all. I believe my generation did their job and turned out well.

In my talking to young people today I don’t see the range of understanding that my generation shared. They know a great deal about science, but not much else. It may be my age talking, but then, maybe not.

© 2009, Lekatt. All rights reserved.