A PRACTICAL EDUCATION
- Education for the village youngsters was an exercise in sameness. The subject matter, the textbooks and their contents had been the source of basic knowledge for the Ontario school system for several generations. The five "Ontario Public School Readers" introduced students of each grade to the wonders of literature from the teachings of the Greek fables to the stories of the greatness of the Empire. During the eight years of elementary education each student memorized the equivalent of a volume of poems, dates of every battle and conquest that affected Great Britain, the treaties that transferred countries, continents, states, regions and kingdoms from one sovereign to another and other useless data. Educators called it "mind expansion"; it allowed the student to find space in the mental department for such educational tidbits as the rivers that flow into the Firth or Forth, why a shorthorn cow doesn't give as much milk as a holstein and the place for a verb, a noun and an adjective in a sentence. It was also necessary to fill the ever expanding mind with the number of rods of fence required to fence a field, how many rolls of wallpaper mother would have to buy to paper the parlour, and if one hen could lay twelve eggs in a month, how many eggs would a a hundred and seven hens lay in a year. Don't forget before you graduated from public school you were required to be well versed in such great political events as the Family Compact, the rise and fall of Laurier, the greatness of Howard G
Ferguson and the Ontario Tory party that always rescued the province from the questionable governments of the Liberals. Ceasar, Charles I, Pitt, Gladstone and Helson also became part of the memory process.
- Students attended school by government decree until they were sixteen. Many would rather have been following what was to be their life long vocation, farming, the family business or the occupation of their father. Many girls saw their future in the kitchen preparing meals just like mother.
- Every class had students who saw their future as a teacher, nurse, steno, a professional, a highly skilled technician or an earth shattering genius. If people like Einstein or Lincoln with limited education could succeed, Ontario students who applied themselves to the offerings of the educational system in their school could rise to any height.
- The memories of school for most students wasn't the Charge of the Light Brigade, the battle on the Plains of Abraham, the distance a speeding train would cover in forty-six minutes or being able to recite every verse of the Burial of Moses without faltering, it was the friends, the memories of special events, the pranks, the idiosyncrasies of teachers and two important days in everyone's life, the day a student started to school and the day of finishing.
- The village school had a multitude of memories created by students teachers of several generations. These memories range from schoolyard happenings, individual events, classroom occurrences, designing circumvention of rules and planned indiscretions to test the tolerance of a teacher. Some of the major events of former generations always became colossal happenings after being related by several generations.
- Every generation had the memories of individual students, the big kid that couldn't fit into a junior desk, the one that was "Dead-eye-Dick" with a snowball, the school comedian, those with tough feet that could walk the gravel road to school without shoes, the many and varied smells that surrounded some school room areas, teachers that could squelch any student with her penetrating look, the genius with all the answers, the paragon of perfection that could do no wrong and the "who me " individual who could talk himself out of any incriminating situation.
- Then there are always of the questions when people gather for a village reunion, whatever happened to George, John, Charlie, Stinky, buxom Bessie, Redheaded Tilly, Glamourous Gussy or old Amy, the teacher fresh out of Normal School and still a teenager.
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