Macoupin County, Illinois - Chapter 14: Pioneer Schools, 1911

A history of the county without noticing the educational interests, would be incomplete, and yet we are unable to give much valuable information in regard to the early school system of the county. The fact is, the early schools of the county were like angel's visits are said to be, "few and far between," and the whole educational system - if system it may be called - of Macoupin county, in common with the state was almost without order or management. There were good schools taught but as compared with the present system and its advantages, they were far inferior. There were some good "schoolmasters" in those days who were very successful in rearing the tender minds and "teaching the young ideas how to shoot," but the majority were but poorly qualified for the duties of instructors. The popular standard of education was low, owing to the peculiar incidents and surroundings of pioneer life. The country was sparsely settled and the people generally poor, and however anxious they may have been for good educational advantages, it was utterly impossible to obtain them. But few who had qualified themselves for the profession of teaching wandered so far west. The schoolmaster was generally some unfortunate, poverty stricken wretch who had been wafted to the outskirts of civilization and had become snow bound, water bound or frost bitten, and was compelled to "take up a school" to keep soul and body together until a favorable opportunity presented itself for him to get to his destination, or back to his home in the east. Not infrequently did it happen that a man was to be found who was too lazy, in the popular estimation, for anything else than a schoolteacher, who was induced to pass around his "subscription for signers" and "take up" a school. Some people seemed to have entertained the idea that laziness was one of the qualifications of a schoolteacher. The Biblical camel could about as well accomplish the needle's eye feat as one of these living specimens of inertia could properly manage and "keep a school" in those days, when the big boys were boiling over with mischief and had no great respect for the restraint of the schoolroom anyhow. The teachers were of necessity poorly paid, and all things considered, perhaps, rendered as much instruction in proportion to the compensation as those of the present day. It was certainly no pleasant task in those days the teacher had to perform. He usually "boarded round" with the scholars and in this respect was like a stray dog, having no fixed place of abode. He was compelled to make long and laborious journeys to and from his temporary stopping places, which, taken in connection with the fact that the poor fellow was often poorly clad and possessed no great amount of vitality at any rate, rendered him an object of mingled commiseration and pity. He was likewise made the target at which was hurled all the knotty questions of theology, mathematics, science and politics, that had descended down to the different households from generation to generation.

These knotty problems were piled on the poor pedagogue promiscuously and in pell-mell order, as though he were a creature of infinite power and had the ability to solve them, seriatim, by some magical power to the populace unknown. The big boys of the neighboring district poured in on the poor fellow all sorts of mathematical questions that would have puzzled the arithmetic makers themselves, and it was a forfeiture of his standing in the community if he did not furnish a solution and prove his demonstration by the rules of Smiley or Adams. It was not infrequent in later days that the school-master was put through a most critical examination on Kirkham or Smith, by paterfamilias, to determine his fitness to teach Sarah Jane the rudiments of English grammar, and woe betide the unfortunate pedagogue if by chance he happened to transgress the ipse dixit of the inquisitor's favorite author. He was, also the neighborhood calculator of interest on all the paid and unpaid notes of the community and was expected to furnish each family with the mathematical data as to the required number of hogs, at a given price, to purchase the adjoining forty acres at the next sale of the land office. He was also expected to furnish to order reasonable and satisfactory arguments for combatting the heretical dogmas of preacher so-and-so, who had a short time previous come near capturing the whole neighborhood with his "new light" doctrines or antitotal-depravity theories.

He also had divers other difficulties to meet and overcome. He was actually compelled to court the good graces of the young men who were his pupils. They were sometimes disposed on slight provocation to plot treason against the government, which sometimes ripened into overt acts. It often happened that open rebellion existed and the poor teacher was subjected to a pummeling at the hands of the refractory members of his school. At other times the parents themselves, for grievances they supposed justifiable, took the law into their own hands and inflicted upon the offending master a punishment entirely too serious for a well regulated community to tolerate. An instance is related of one poor fellow who had offended his patrons, being compelled to make the best record known in the community, in the shape of a foot race, being urged on and on in front of a pair of brutal stogas which were propelled by an irate father. His coat tails are said to have ever and anon floated high in the air at the touch of the swearing, raging, pursuing ursine. Whether henceforth the offending teacher became a wanderer, disconsolate and heart broken, like Ichabod Crane, is not stated.

Other instances might be given where ye pedagogue was bound hand and foot by his pupils, taken by force of arms from his castle, as it were, and ducked in the creek or frog pond, and that, too, when the temperature was almost as frigid as it is supposed to be on the north side of the icebergs in Iceland. There was also a habit in early days of barring the teacher out of the schoolhouse on Christmas if he would not treat the school to apples, candy or something of that nature equally as significant. It is even said that the demands of the elder portion of the male pupils were often for a jug of something stronger and more exhilarating. This was a custom originating no one knows where, at one time rigidly adhered to but now passed away with many other aforetime usages.

The teacher had his pleasures and enjoyments as well. It was not all thorns and thistles that grew along his pathway. A few flowers, - puny, sickly blossoms of the morning glory order, to us they might seem but flowers, nevertheless - also grew among them. He was one of the lords of creation, as he boarded around from house to house. There was nothing too good in the eating line, from the dried pumpkins that hung in strings on the wall, to honey and venison and wild turkey, that was not placed before him. There was nothing but the dyspepsia that prevented the revolving teacher from faring sumptuously every day ; and few remember of having seen a schoolteacher in those days of long walks and airy schoolhouses, who was a dyspeptic. The general experience of the good old housewives of those days is, that a schoolteacher who had eaten a cold dinner, or no dinner at all, and then after school "was out" had walked from two to five miles to his evening domicile and had his appetite whetted by the appetizing aroma that rose from the semicircle of cooking victuals in front of the old fashioned fire place, could come as near reading his title clear to earthly enjoyment as any one. He was generally able to do ample and complete justice to the repast, so to speak. There was enjoyment in it. He was ipso facto for the time being, lord of all he surveyed, and he surveyed with a kind of otium cum dignitate grace that would make a hungry mortal feel glorious.

If he had any knack at all in story telling, he was undoubtedly edified in sitting around the fireside during the long winter evenings and dealing out to the listening household those startling stories that have descended down from generations and have accumulated in size and horror at almost every repetition. Old grandma, too, was often on hand with her stories of goblins and ghosts, that made the little folks as well as the teacher, feel shaky and down hearted and almost afraid to move. There were in those early days when most people had nothing to read, except, perhaps, the Testament, Peep of Day, Life of Boone, or Marion, much real enjoyment in story telling and the teacher was always expected to do his duty in this regard, or else be voted an uncommon bore. And then he was the generalissimo at all the parties and gatherings, from the "apple pealings" up to the wedding. At the latter place he was regarded as but little lower than the parson himself and was expected to furnish the fun necessary for the occasion - and it was usually a very cheap order of fun required, for on such occasions the whole assembly was easily set wild with mirth and laughter on the slightest of provocations. An old fashioned wedding with the teacher left out was not regarded as altogether a success. The materials were all there but it lacked a free and easy sort of a fellow, such as the teacher usually was, to set the giggling machinery a-going.

But it was in the schoolroom of those early days that the teacher showed his powers to the greatest advantage. There he was the supreme autocrat and ruled usually with a kind of sledge hammer bravado that was a terror to little urchins. The moment he called "books" there was a mingled expression of sternness and gravity that settled on his austere brow; as though he was born to rule the storm. That very moment he became transposed from Philip drunk, to Philip sober, as it were; and he gathered up all the hilarious faculties about him and drowned them out as if thenceforth and forever he expected to remain an iceberg of despair and solemnity. When he spoke, he spoke as one having authority, and his orders were peremptory and absolute. There was no look of compromise in his appearance and the black flag was kept continually unfurled from his ramparts. On the morning school commenced, he read a string of rules as long as the code of Napoleon, and altogether more stringent. These rules he carried in his hat, read once a day, by way of warning, and in the enforcing of which he directed more energy, mental and physical, than to imparting instruction. There stood in the corner, or lay concealed in the desk, a weapon of daily use, of hickory or hazel origin. This he used as a war measure, both offensive and defensive. It was not used as a dernier resort, but as a first resort, and that, too, often quite vigorously. When the offending urchin had passed the line prescribed by the oft repeated rules, no matter whether intentional or not, down came the rod, if for no other reason than to show the inexorable quality of the aforesaid rules. Order was the first law of heaven and the keeping of order was the keeping of the rules. If, for instance, the rules said "no laughing out in school allowed," and by the merest accident! and wholly unintentional, the most innocent little titter was heard above the surrounding din, the dogs of war were let loose and the offender dragged to justice. Who that has ever been in school with a lot of little, mirth loving children, all bubbling over with fun, and does not know that there are little incidents occurring in the schoolroom daily that it would be worse than death itself if the little fellows could not laugh. Just as well try to dam up the Niagara at the rapids as suppress one of these involuntary laughs in a child full of spirit and life. "It won't down." Yet the teacher had his rules and these rules were absolutely without provisos, and he enforced them without an if or a but. He regarded it as a kind of dot-your-i-and-cross-your-t-transaction. The act was sure to bring on the penalty without regard to intention or any other element of crime.

The method of teaching was also quite different from that of the present day. It is hardly susceptible of accurate description. It is one of those things that ought to be seen to be duly appreciated. The school books were very few. Webster's spelling book was the book used by beginners, usually; though, perhaps, not used in the first schools of the county. There was the old English reader that succeeded next in order, after the spelling book. But few, however, were able to obtain it. There was no uniformity in the school books. Almost every family of children had a different kind of book, which their parents had used in their school days, and had handed down usually in a good state of preservation. It was not unusual that the children learned their a, b, c's from a shingle, upon which the letters were cut or made with chalk or charcoal. The New Testament was often used as a reader for all grades of advancement. It answered the purpose of a first, second, third, fourth or fifth reader. It was in arithmetic, however, that the defects of the early system of educational training were the most apparent. In this there was absolutely no order or system. There were no classes and each pupil, provided with an arithmetic, slate and pencil, "ciphered" on at his own pleasure, without explanation or verification. He was required to commit the rules to memory, or so much of them as was printed in italics. This done, he launched out into the solution of the problems, having but one object in view, and that was to obtain the answer given. The whys and wherefores of the different steps taken in procuring the answer were matters of no concern whatever. The "sum" stated, and the thus saith the rule, were all the pupil desired and all that the teacher required. It was a kind of mechanical process that he went through, without being able to give a single reason for a single step taken, except the mere fact that the rule said so and so. When the pupil came to an example, which, after a trial or two, he failed to obtain the answer given, he reported the fact to the teacher and the solution was given on the slate, often without explanation, and the pupil returned to his place in the schoolroom satisfied, not because he understood the modus operandi, but because he had the required answer. This process was kept up until the pupil had progressed as far as the "single" or perhaps the "double rule of three," which was generally regarded as the ultima thule in mathematical education, and that, too, quite often from an inability on the part of the teacher to conduct - if conduct it may be called - his pupil farther. All that lay beyond that, as a usual thing, was as a sealed book - a frozen sea on which the pupil dared not, or considered it useless, to venture. The arithmetics of the early days were far inferior and less suitable for pupils than those of today. The old dry pages of Duball, with their pounds, shillings and pence, would make a fit subject for comparison with the old bar-shear plow of fifty years ago. If these two articles of the past were not on exhibition at the Centennial of 1876, they should have been, as mementoes of the past to mark our onward steps of progress.

English grammar was a study seldom pursued. It was considered as rather too effeminate in its nature for the hardy sons who grew up in the early days of the county. It was sometimes studied, however, by the girls, as being more suitable to their natures and mental characteristics. It was not until within the last few years that anatomy, physiology and hygiene were made a part of the common-school curriculum. The laws of life and health were singularly omitted in the education of the children under the old system of education. It was considered, however, as highly proper that the children should spend nine-tenths of their school days in learning to spell the contents of Webster's Elementary from asperity to the pictures, without for once learning the simplest rudiments pertaining to the preservation of health and life.

The methods of recitation and teachings were different from those of today, and the modes of study and deportment of the pupils were also very different. It was quite common during school hours for all the pupils to study aloud, some reading, some spelling, some reciting, some in one tone of voice and some in another, and all striving, seemingly, to make a bedlam equal to Babel. There were swells in the general racket when it seemed impossible to distinguish in the din, one idea of human origin or sense. The noise and confusion were worse confounded than the jabbering of an army of monkeys in Africa. This would gradually die out until some little urchin, alone, would be heard unconsciously conning over his b-a-k-e-r baker, s-h-a-d-y shady - the only audible sound to .be heard in the whole room. He, too, when nudged in the' side by some seat mate, would see the ridiculousness of the situation and relapse into profound silence. Then the condition of affairs would fitly illustrate the saying that "after a storm the sea grows calm."

The schoolhouses were likewise worthy of mention. They were almost invariably built of logs and were "chinked and daubed." Some of them had no floors, and those that did have the floors were made of puncheons hewed upon one side and not altogether as smooth as marble floors. The schoolhouse was heated from a large fire place at one end of the room. These fire places were of capacious dimensions. Huge logs were often rolled in or carried in by the teacher and scholars, that, except in length would have made good saw logs. The chimneys were made of wood and clay, of sufficient size to have permitted a good sized yearling elephant to have been thrown down them. Of course most of the heat from the fire places below passed up the chimney, instead of being thrown out into the room. The windows were usually made by cutting out a log upon one side of the schoolhouse, making the windows rather wide but not very high. Glass, they had none, for the first schoolhouses, and these "openings in the wall," that have been described, were covered over with greased paper. The effect of greasing the paper, in this glazing process, was to make it more transparent and also tougher, so as to withstand the storms of wind and rain. It must have been a mellow tinted light, that which was admitted through those tallow dipped window panes. However, whether good or bad, it was the only makeshift they had until glass became accessible. The seats in those old schoolhouses would be a terror to this generation. They, too, like the floors, were made of slabs, hewed upon one side, and of course, had no backs to them. The little fellows were placed side by side on those rough benches, six, eight, or ten in a row, and scarcely any of these could reach the floor with their feet, the benches were so high. Legs were driven into the slabs from the lower side and it was not always that they were of the same length, so that, at times, th'e benches would rock from side to side, greatly to the terror of the little boys or girls perched on the top, as the equilibrium was changed.

It must not be inferred, however, from what has been said, that there were no good results growing up from the educational facilities mentioned, defective though they were. Men have graced the presidential chair and earned national and world wide reputations, whose minds received their first impulses in development from just such schoolrooms and educational advantages as has been mentioned. Bud Means' are quite common in this western country. And it may be debatable ground today whether Oxford and Harvard have made more great men than the stinging, urging necessities to self improvement and self education, growing out of the defects and wants of educational facilities of these pioneer colleges. Perhaps the want of education and the feeling of that want, has built as many schoolhouses as the possession of education, coupled with a consciousness of its advantages. "Wittles" were what the hungry Sam Weller wanted most.

The writing desks were made of split logs and in later days, of planks, which were ranged around the sides of the room, usually under the windows. Pins were driven into the wall and the slags or planks laid on them, and this constituted the writing desks for a great many years. They were not of that gilt edged and varnished sort of today, but were quite as substantial. These are the desks that the boys took such a vicious delight in defacing with their jackknives. They cut upon them all sorts of hieroglyphical characters, checker boards and representations of human beings and not human, some of which no doubt, would have made Thomas Nast ashamed of himself. The larger boys and girls were privileged to sit at these desks, not only while writing, but while "doing their sums." Blackboards and charts were unknown in those days and in fact, were not needed in the method of teaching then prevailing. A good many young men remember when the new fangled idea of a blackboard was looked upon with a little bit of distrust by some of the kind hearted conservative old fellows. It was the same old chaps who also winked a kind of knowing wink at each other when the corn planter was introduced.

Such as has been mentioned were the schoolhouses, school furniture and schools of fifty, forty, and even thirty years ago. They were the best that could then be afforded. It may seem, and it does seem, to many who have witnessed the educational facilities above detailed, that the present generation of children does not duly appreciate the advantages that surround them. They do not perhaps duly appreciate their advantages for the same reason that the person reared in wealth and luxury poorly understands the condition of the poverty stricken wretch, that ekes out a miserable existence, always on the verge of want and starvation.