Learning in a One Room School House

This is the fourth story from Ruth Zwald, written by her father, Robert Zwald, and submitted as part of our Wisdom From Our Elders collection of self-sufficient tales from yesteryear. She compiled her father’s stories in his own words, and they are posted in eight parts. Read the other parts: 1900s Farming in Washington County Minnesota; Growing Up on a Farm; Catching Frogs for Money; Borrowing Against Life Insurance; Changes in Agriculture; Courtship and Marriage and The Wisconsin Farm.   

School Life 
Now I’m going to take you to school, which I started at 6 or 7 years old. It was a one-room school house with 25-30 kids. We said the pledge of allegiance to the flag every morning after our exercises. There was one teacher, who boarded at the nearest farmhouse and was paid $3-$5 a month, plus room and board. She also did janitor work, including starting the fire in the stove in the front of the school, near her desk. She would call each grade, 1-8, to the front of the room for history, geography, arithmetic, penmanship or whatever. We learned a lot from the kids in the grades ahead of us. We had to learn the multiplication tables and learn to spell.

We walked about a mile and a half to school. Sometimes we would ski across the fields, which was a shortcut. If it was a blizzard, we usually didn’t go; unless Dad would hitch up a sleigh and we would sit in the bottom covered with a fur robe made from bear. We didn’t have running water in school, so the older boys had to take turns getting water from a nearby farm and carry it in 5 gallon milk cans - fun in the snow – and then we put the water in a pail that had a spigot on the bottom. We all drank from the same dipper - boy, were we modern.

Everyone carried their own lunch pails. We ate at our desks, or outside when the weather was warm. I remember sitting on a log to have my lunch. The last two years I was in school, the mothers of the kids bought a kerosene stove and they took turns cooking. Hot food - it couldn’t get any better. The bathrooms were outside. If you had to go, you raised one finger- only one person was allowed at a time. If you raised two fingers, that meant you wanted to speak (whisper) to someone in your grade about a problem or question.

When I was in grade school, I wore many used clothes from my cousin Dick Lueke. I wore knickers to church. They came to your knees and had a tight band around them. I hated them. They probably were homemade. Finally, I got long pants! 

For fun, we played baseball and the trees were our bases. We played “Annie, Annie” over the schoolhouse. We played volleyball once a year with other districts. We wrestled a lot, slid down hills, and iceskated when a nearby low spot filled with water and froze.