Why That Good Ole One Room School Was So Good

Some Introductory Musings

Maybe it was because I had just watched the movie “Boyhood,” and was thinking back on my own boyhood days, or because I had just read about some new innovations in education.

Whatever it was, I found myself thinking about Prairie View School (PVS)– a one-room school 1 ½ miles south and 2 miles east of Weldon, Illinois– where I faithfully attended for 8 years.

Prairie View School – Having Evolved from Bright White to Worn and Faded Gray.

Having turned 5 in February and really angry—I gave my mother an earful on why it wasn’t fair that my two neighbor friends could go to school and I couldn’t. Shocked by my unusual fuming and ranting — but to her eternal credit — she didn’t shut me up — she just listened.

Finally, she took off her apron, straightened her dress, and matter-of-factly said, “Get in the car. We are going to go talk with Mrs. Ball.”

Nothing scientific. Mrs. Ball, the teacher at Prairie View, simply looked me over, listened to my mother and I for 5 minutes, and said “Okay, we’ll have a trial period.”

At the end of my trial period, when I overheard Mrs. Ball say to my mother “He’s a __ little devil,” my heart skipped a beat.

I hadn’t heard the blank word, and worried that my plan to go to school was doomed.

But, somehow, I was in (little devil or not), and attended Prairie View School from age 5 through age 13.

Let me tell you, through my experiences, why I think PVS was a wonderful place.

 My First Exciting Discovery

Very early on, as I sat at my little desk working on an arithmetic worksheet, I suddenly discovered that I could eavesdrop on Mrs. Ball, over in the corner, teaching the 7^th and 8^th graders.

What they were talking about was interesting to me, and for 8 years, I multitasked- listening to other grade level groups while completing my worksheets.

You talk about enrichment and meeting individual needs.  I was never bored again!

My First Job

When Mrs. Wene, my 4^th grade teacher, asked me to come to school early to help her carry in cobs and coal heat up the stove,  I was really excited! And she paid me 50 cents a week to do it!!

I felt proud to be chosen, I felt trusted. I felt competent. I felt responsible. I felt satisfaction about success.

Come to think of it, that’s how I felt later in life about all my other jobs.

Being Taught life skills and attitudes… on my first job!

My Early Acting Career

Mrs. Wene didn’t ask me to be in a two person Christmas Play with my second cousin, Sharon Carr- she just acted as if it was a given—and a hillbilly romantic skit, no less.

I received raves from all the parents, and that experience made me want to later take parts in high school plays, and feel comfortable in front of people.

One of the many extra curricular activities at PVS —building confidence and learning how to do things.

My First Taste of Leadership

 During the war, we had a scrap metal drive- the “Dive Bombers” and the “Submarines” teams competing- to help the war effort.

The Dive Bombers Scrap Drive, October, 1942

I was leader of the Dive Bombers- organizing the team, planning our collection and delivery schedules, and getting others on my team to collect a lot of scrap.

We were the winning team, and in retrospect I considered it my first successful project experience.

Meaningful learning and leadership training through projects. What Progressive Education!

 My First Sex Education

One day, not long after I started school, all the boys hightailed it to the outdoor boys toilet at recess.

There, in close proximity to the smelly latrine, I had my first introduction to sex education.

I can truly say, looking back, that what I learned about the birds and bees from the boys at Prairie View School was pretty accurate, and sufficed until I read certain library books at Illinois State University.

Cooperative learning and Sex Education at the same time! Wow!

  Me, Thee, and The Ciphering Contest

 At PVS, the teacher would have us go up to the blackboard and to do long multiplication or division calculations.

If you finished first, you took your seat and waited on the others. I was hands-down the fastest cipherer in the school.

When we visited the “town school” in Weldon and a ciphering contest came up, I thought “No sweat, “I always finish first.”

Lo and behold, I was still ciphering away when a slight girl named Ada Katherine Pearl was already sitting down, with a big smile on her face.

I learned humility that day, and that there is always someone in this world who can do something better than you can.

Active involvement and developing self knowledge—in PVS!

P.S. Many years later, when I was a Professor of Mathematics

at Illinois State University, my friend, Ada Katherine Pearl, knocked on my office door.

I was very quick to make it clear that, under the circumstances, there would be no ciphering contests in the mathematics department that day.

The Essay Contest

Mrs. O’Connor, my 7^th grade teacher at PVS, asked me to stay after school one day and told me that I should enter a three county essay contest for 7^th and 8^th graders that offered a prize of $25 for the winner.

I thought “I could use $25,” so I entered.

My essay, “From Little Acorns Big Oaks Grow,” won the contest, and was printed in full in The Weldon Record, a local paper of some renown.

 Entering and winning that essay contest probably sowed the seed of interest that launched my career as a writer.

Special attention to every student and another teacher who cares. Thank You, Mrs. O’Connor!

Mrs O’Connor and her Prairie View Students, 1946

Summary- What a Place in Which to Learn!

In PVS, the student teacher ratio was 15 to 1, and the 16 people in that place were one special family.

If PVS is any indication, perhaps all the “innovative approaches” we fuss about in education today aren’t as new as we think, and were being used when we didn’t even talk about them.

And maybe what’s really important is providing a loving, family setting like Prairie View School, in which a conscientious teacher cares about her students and, like each of my PVS teachers, does her very best.