Mickey Starling
reporter3@greenepublishing.com
As kids all over the country are returning to school, many don't know how good they have it. Today, most kids ride a bus to school or catch a ride with parents or friends. Less than a hundred years ago, the kids often walked several miles to school. Yes, those horror stories from your grandparents were true.
The children who walked to school were the fortunate ones. Only a half of all school-aged children even attended school back in the day. Many kids had to work on the farm or get jobs to help the family make ends meet. This is still the reason school starts around September or late August. That way, the kids are available for the increased farming activity common to the summer months.
School itself had a very different appearance in former years. Most folks attended one-room school houses with eight or more grades in the room. Teachers were normally very strict and not above embarrassing kids while administering discipline for misbehavior. The dunce cap is one example of attempting to correct a student through humiliation. The caps were awarded to students who were deemed as lazy or incompetent, perhaps even stupid. Such designations are not permitted today, at least not publicly.
While your kids were busy picking out their attire for the new school year, the oldtimers had uniforms to look forward to. Girls often wore dresses that began at their chins and ended at their shoelaces. The boys also were well covered, wearing long sleeves, buttoned to the top. Shorts were no where in sight, and neither was air conditioning.
In Madison, school lunchtimes could be quite entertaining. In the early 1900s, it wasn't uncommon to have livestock randomly roaming about in the schoolyard. The slop buckets the pigs hoped for might have been the same buckets the kids brought their lunch in. Cold biscuits and grits, sausage or bacon and some occasional syrup or molasses were common meals. Some were fortunate to have sandwiches or leftovers for lunch. Schools didn't provide lunches on a national level until the 1940s.
As your kids get the school year started, perhaps complaining about rising early or having too much homework, remind them to be thankful for that bus, cool classrooms and warm meals. Plus, there's not a dunce cap anywhere in sight.