USA > Illinois > Macon County > History of Macon County, Illinois, from its organization to 1876 > Part 18
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These knotty problems were piled on the poor pedagogue pro- miscuously, 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 teacher and big boys of the neighboring district poured in on the poor fellow all sorts of mathematical questions that would have puzzled the arith- metic makers themselves, and it was a forfeiture of his standing in the community if he did not furnish a solution and prove his dem- onstration 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 pater familias, to determine his fitness to teach Sarah Jane the rudiments of English Grammar, and woe betide the unfortunate pedagogue if by chance he happen- ed 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 also expected to fur- nish each family with the mathematical data as to the required num-
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ber of hogs, at a given price, to purchase the adjoining forty acres at the next sale, at 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 pre- vious.came near capturing the whole neighborhood with his " new light " doctrines, or anti-total-depravity-theories.
He had, also, divers other difficulties to meet and overcome. He was usually compelled to court the good graces of the young men who were his pupils. They sometimes were disposed, on slight provocation, to plot treason against the government, which some- times ripened into overt acts. It often happened that open rebel- lion 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 com- munity 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 air, at the touch of the swearing, raging, pursuing ursine. Whether, henceforth, the offending teacher became a wan- derer, 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 baring the teacher out of the school-house on Christmas if he would not treat the school to apples, candy, or something of that nature equally as insignificant. 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 ad- hered 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
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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 fareing sumptuously every day; and few remember of having seen a school-teacher in those days of long walks, airy school-houses, who was dyspeptic. The general experience of the good old house-wives of those days is, that a school-teacher 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 domi- cile, and had his appetite whetted by the appetising aroma that rose from the semicircle of cooking victuals in front of the old-fashioned fire-places, could come as ncar reading his title clear, to earthly en- joyment, as any one. He was generally able to do ample and com- plete 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 fecl glorious.
If he had any knack at all in story-telling, he was undoubtedly highly edified in sitting around the firesides during the long winter evenings, and dealing out to the listening household those startling stories that have descended down for generations, and have accu- mulated in size and horror at almost each repetition.". Old grandma, too, was often on hand with her stories of goblins and ghosts, that made the little folks, and teacher as well, 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 en- joyment 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 occa- sions the whole assembly was easily set wild with mirth and laugh-
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ter 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 ma- chinery a-going.
But it was in the school room 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 become transposed from Philip drunk, to Philip sober, as it were; and he gathered up all the hila- rious faculties about him, and drowned them out as if thenceforth and forever he expected to remain an iceberg of despair and solem- nity. When he spoke, he spoke as one having authority; and his orders were peremtory and absolute. There was no look of com- promise 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 Napoleon, and alto- gether more stringent. These rules he carried in his hat, read once a day, by way of warning, and in the enforcing of which he direct- ed 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 brats, all bubbling over with fun, and does not know that there are little incidents occuring in the school-room daily, that it would be worse than death itself if the little fellows could not laugh. Just as well try
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to dam up the Niagara at the rapids, as suppress one of these invol- untary laughs in a child full of spirit and life. "It won't down." Yet the teacher had his rules, and these rules were absolutely with- out 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, how- ever, 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 ad- vancement. 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 pen- cil, "ciphered" on at his own pleasure, without explanation or ver- ification. 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 where- fores of the different steps taken in procuring the answer were mat- ters of no concern whatever. The "sum" stated, and the thus saith the rule, were all the pupil desired, and all that the teacher requir- ed. It was a kind of mechanical process that he went through with 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 given answer, he reported the fact to the teacher, and
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the solution was given on the slate, often without explanation, and the pupil returned to his place in the school-room satisfied; not be- cause he understood the modus operandi, but because he had the answer required. 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 math- ematical 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 consid- ered it useless to venture. The arithmetics of the early days were far inferior and less suitable for pupils than those of to-day. The old dry pages of Daball, 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 mementos of the past, to mark our onward steps of progress.
English grammar was a study seldom pursued. It was consid- ered as rather too effeminate in its nature for the hardy sons who grew up in the early days of the county. It was sometimes stud- ied, 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 hygene, 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 pro- per 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 rudi- ments pertaining to the preservation of health and life.
The methods of recitations and teaching were different from those of to-day; 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 spell- ing, 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
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an army of monkeys in Africa. This would gradually die out until some little urchin, alone, would be heard unconsciously coming 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 school-houses 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 school-house 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 school-house, making the windows rather wide but not very high. Glass, they had none, for the first school-houses, 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 make-shift they had until glass became accessible. The seats in those old school-houses 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 them 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, the benches would rock from side to side, greatly to the terror of the
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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 facili- ties I have 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 develop- ment from just such school-rooms and educational advantages as I have mentioned. Bud Means' are quite common in this western country. And it may be debatable ground to-day 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 col- leges. Perhaps the want of education, and the feeling of that want, has built as many school-houses 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 slabs 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 to-day, but were quite as substantial. These are the desks that the boys took such a vicious delight in defacing with their jack-knives. They cut upon them all sorts of hieroglyphical char- acters, checker-boards, and representations of beings human and not human, some of which, no doubt, would have made Th. Nast ashamed of himself. The larger boys and girls were privileged to set 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 I have mentioned were the school-houses, school furni- ture and schools of fifty, forty, and even thirty years ago. They were the best that could then be afforded. It may seem, and it
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does seem to many who have witnessed the educational facilities above detailed, that the present generation of children do not duly appreciate the advantages that surround them. They do not, per- haps, duly appreciate their advantages for the same reason that the person reared in wealth and luxury poorly understands the condi- tion of the poverty-stricken wretch, that ekes out a miserable ex- ยท istence, always on the verge of want and starvation.
Now, then, a few words in reference to the present condition of our educational interests. In 1855 the legislature of the State of Illinois passed what is known as the free-school law. Like all laws designed to reach innumerable evils, and embracing a subject com- prehensive and complicated, it was in many respects defective. Frequent amendments and modifications of the law have been, and will continue to be made, as wisdom and experience may suggest. One great object attained, partially, has been to bring order and system in place of the chaotic and disjointed school machinery pre- viously existing. That our school system is perfect, no one will assume. That it will be perfect while our young men and women employed as teachers, as a usual thing, engage therein as a tempo- rary avocation and stepping-stone to something higher, of course, is impossible. It is not the fault of the teachers that this is so. It ought to be and will be so, that teaching will be a profession the same as law and medicine. The requirements and qualifications of a teacher should be just as exacting, and a course of preparation and study for the one should be just as imperative as in the others. No person can teach a six-months' school, properly, with the thoughts and expectations of assuming another and different avoca- tion or employment at the end of that period. It is not now so in our cities to any considerable extent, but there are but few teachers in our country schools that follow teaching as a business or profes- sion. It is seldom they could do so if they desired; for the average country school is perhaps not more than five months in length, and no teacher can live properly and support a family upon five months' wages. And then the management under our district system is such, that even though a teacher qualify himself properly, and teaches a good school for his patrons, he is liable to be thrown out of his position by some nondescript that happens along who can afford to underbid him, and does so. A cheap shoe is not always the cheapest. It may answer the purposes for the time being, even
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though the material is poor and the fit is bad; but nine chances to one, you will have corns, and it may be, bunyons, when it is done with. Our school system is not yet perfect, when a change of residence from one district to another, involves the purchase of a new set of school-books for the whole family of school-going chil- dren. It is not perfect when there are placed together in one school, perhaps forty pupils, all under the charge of one teacher, and pursuing studies ranging from the lowest to the highest per- mitted to be taught. None will receive the attention they require. This difficulty, of course, will be remedied as our population be- comes more compact, and graded schools are established.
Again, our school system is not and cannot be perfect, when there are in the state forty-four thousand officers charged with the duty of engineering and operating our school machinery. We have in the state about twelve thousand school districts, and thirty-six thou- sand school directors, and these thirty-six thousand directors, each possessing his individual ideas as to the management, etc., of the schools .* Each board is empowered with the authority to deter- mine the kind of text books to be used, the methods of instruction, the discipline and government required, and the kind of teacher, mentally and morally, to be employed. Is it possible, under this army of school officers, each board managing and controlling its affairs in its own way, that there will be much uniformity or sys- tem in our schools. No good results are accomplished, except by system and order. When a hundred men are charged with a duty which six, or even three, can perform, the probability is it will not be done, or if done, the work will not be very satisfactory, and especially so, if each performs his part in his own way, not know- ing or caring how or in what manner the others are doing their part.
Again, suppose a teacher, by twenty years' teaching and practice, had qualified himself for the duties of his profession, and understood human nature, as displayed in the school-room, in all its phases, so that by looking over the school-room, he could, by a glance, pick out all the little "inglorious Miltons," the sulky Johnies, and the stubborn Sarah Janes, and knew at once the sauce for each, so to speak; and suppose he knew, by careful examination, the merits and demerits of the whole list of school-books that have passed
* We have in Macon county 119 districts.
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through the ten-cylinder presses of Hinkle & Wilson, what sort of propriety would there be in allowing a board of directors who, however well versed in hogs and cattle, and their peculiarities, in plows and cultivators and their advantages, to say, "teach Ray's series, Green's rudiments, McGuffey's readers; or, if the pupils don't obey, flog 'em, its the only thing that will answer in this deestrict, or you do thus and so, or don't you do thus and so?" So it is, however.
Of course, there are still defects in our present educational sys- tem. Nothing devised by man can be perfect. And still it is as- tonishing to see the rapid strides we are making in the direction of perfection. Ask our Superintendent of Public Instruction how . many schools and school houses and school teachers-male and . female-and the average salary paid them, and total number of school children between certain ages, and the entire cost of the education, and the average cost to each pupil in the state; and he can tell you. Ask our County Superintendent how many there are in the county between the ages of 6 and 21, how many of these go to school, and how many do not; how many of them can neither read or write; the actual standing of each teacher in educational qualifications; how much money is expended in the county for schools, school-houses, school furniture, etc .; and he can tell you. Every teacher, no matter if he pretends to have been a college professor, must have a certificate in order to teach. If a board of directors, for lack of funds, or otherwise, desire a teacher who "passes muster" as a "second grade," it can have its wants, and vice versa.
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