Remembering country schooling

As a girl I went to country schools. The fi rst school I attended in Nebraska - I probably was only about 5 - was located on my father’s ranch about a quarter of a mile walk.

The only students were us Wiggin kids. I was number six in a family of 12, and the state provided for our schooling. I only remember one teacher, a young girl, who couldn’t have been out of school herself for long.

We moved to Arkansas the summer before I entered third grade. We walked to Wann School, exactly one mile away.

(Parents driving their children to school was unheard of in those days.) Billie Jines wrote in her history of one-room schoolhouses, ” … traditional in looks to others of that era - longer than it was wide, windows on both sides, and two doors at the front. Inside the frame structure was a raised area, or low stage,providing a place for the teacher’s desk that allowed her (usually a young mother) a clear view of the students.” To get to school us kids had to cross Honey Creek; during spring rains it was often swollen and we’d have to find a fallen tree to climb across.

Though there were probably less than two dozen kids in grades one through eight, it was the largest school I’d gone to. One of my most fun memories had to do with a woodshed behind the schoolhouse.

During recess we’d hold mock weddings. The day my boyfriend and I were to be “married” our teacher found out about it, and that was the end of our fun time.

I never heard of a cafeteria. We carried our lunch, which might be sandwiches made of peanut butter and syrup or left-over brown beans mashed with mustard. My favorite were fried egg sandwiches.

The schoolhouse was also used for pie suppers or any country gathering.

We had 4-H meetings with my mother as leader. Also had Sunday School there - my mother, of course, serving as principle - and many revivals. We usually took the visiting evangelist home to stay with us during the week-long meeting. One night it rained while we were at church and the creeks rose. The visiting preacher carried me across the high water and one of my shoes fell o◊. I had to wait until September to get my new pair of shoes.

When I was in the seventh grade my teacher and I clashed, so my father sent me to boarding school. I loved it! Away from home and chores, rooming with girls who weren’t my sisters, I made lots of friends.

After my dad died, Momsold our farm and we moved to Gravette. I went to that “large” school in my 11th grade. It was so much fun. I went to basketball games, sold candy in the library and helped Mom in the cafeteria, where I got my lunch free. I found a job working in the fi ve and dime and met my future husband and got married - all in one year.

Schools have really changed since I was young. Today there might be hundreds of kids in each grade. (How would I have handled that?) Pressures are put on children today to get good grades, but I hope the values from long ago are not neglected.

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Editor’s note: Marie Wiggin Putman, and her husband, Jerry, live in Little Flock. A native of Benton County, she writes a monthly column for the Westside Eagle Observer. She and her husband are members of the Pea Ridge Historical Society.

Opinion, Pages 4 on 08/14/2013