Early Learning Back in the Day

 Carolyn J. Rose

 

If you can remember the early 50s, cast your mind back as you read. If you can’t—if you’re too young, or your memories are blurry, or you’ve spent decades trying to forget and have finally succeeded—that’s fine. But here we go, here’s my take on education in those days.

 

 

Oddly—perhaps because of the dearth of options, my grandmother read to me from a book of stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne, stories like “The Great Stone Face.” Did I understand what that was about? Nope. Thinking back, I doubt she even briefly considered moving on to his novel, The Scarlet Letter. And I’m relieved. If she’d attempted to explain adultery I think she would have blushed so intensely her face would have blistered.

Unfortunately, the kinds of books kids learn on now weren’t around; we grappled with the so-called adventures of bland and mindless characters like Dick and Jane. Sure, there were exciting stories and books, but they contained long words and complex sentences. We needed adults to explain and unravel as they read tales like Treasure Island and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. In an age when TV was black and white and kids’ programming sadly lacking, this was great stuff, even with only a few drawings to supplement the text. We used those as springboards to “fill in the blanks” with our imaginations. Those tales became fuel for made-up games and occasional nightmares about pirates and giant squids.

 

But, moving right along. With literary experience under my belt, and with a Hopalong Cassidy lunch box in hand, I set off for the one-room schoolhouse a mile away. There were two of us in the first grade, no one in second, one girl in third, and a sprinkling of kids in the grades above up to high school level.

 

I looked forward to finishing lessons and being allowed to draw along the bottom of a chalk board gray from years of use, to bang chalk dust from erasers, and play with the View-Master or look through the older kids’ history books for maps and pictures of pyramids and the Founding Fathers in their wigs. I also looked forward to lunch—I still do—and recess and the days Mr. Hearn brought his dachshund along. I can’t recall the content of the lessons, but I know they were of the bare-bones variety—drawing numbers and letters with thick pencils on cheap wood-chippy paper, sounding out a few simple words printed in a worn book, counting pictures of apples or cats. Bored between lessons, I’d scooch up toward the front of the room and listen to older kids reading and answering questions about history or math or science.

I see kids now watching videos, playing with fascinating educational toys, and reading books brimming with action, colorful characters, and loads of drawings or photos. I envy them. But I wonder if my imagination would be as powerful if I hadn’t had to work it so hard in order to “fill in the blanks” of my early education.