Three-Ring Circus

Some 3,550,000 U.S. children go to old-fashioned country schools with only one or two teachers. Whether the schooling they get is good or not depends largely on the wisdom and understanding of these teachers (who usually earn less than $100 a month).

Recently a woman of 40, who had never taught before, took a schoolteaching job in a West Coast small town. After three weeks of it, she wrote a circular letter to her friends. Excerpts:

There are circuses of one, two and three rings. I run, or attempt to run, a three-ringer. Only there are no cages and no whips (whips would leave marks, anyway). I have 43 performers in my circus: eleven in the fifth grade, 14 in the fourth, 18 in the third. The total arena is 32 by 23 feet. Except for two or three third-graders, none of the little animals have had trainers. They had a teacher three months of this year; she is now in a mental home. Not that the children drove her crazy; she just was getting crazy anyway.

I didn't believe in corporal punishment. Many other people don't too. Were the children surprised (I was also) when I soundly thumped three boys my second day out. It works, if combined with other methods. Nothing else will. I've got down to about one licking a day now and hope soon to dispense with them altogether. I see signs of progress and even civilization. So far the beatings have caused no rumpus; in fact, the town is delighted.

Worst Experience. Snowballing close around the schoolhouse and on the well-trodden path between school and outhouses is forbidden. There is an enormous field beyond, in which snowballing is tolerated, if not actively encouraged. When I arrived at the front gate one morning, some of my little angels were snowballing some other little angels just in back of school. I went out and thumped three of them. Fate at that moment sent the eighth-grade boys out to snowball the second-graders right under our noses. This is known as being On the Spot. "Oh yeah," my children say, "you spank us little guys but you don't dare touch the big ones!" "Oh, don't I?" says I. I went out and politely told the big boys that they knew the rules. Whereupon they threw some more snowballs, including a few in my direction. I chose the biggest boy I could find (6 ft. 1 in.), hit him as hard as I could, was sworn at, slapped him again, and stood my ground until he slunk off to tell the principal on me. That ended snowballing in the Wrong Place. I had to go out next recess into the field and throw snowballs, just to show I could take it.

Reading, Writing and 'Rithmetic. Arithmetic is not so bad, although I cannot multiply as fast as befits a teacher. But writing, my friends! Especially on blackboards! As I was putting some questions on the board, I heard one child whisper to another: "Gee, she writes terrible!" I agreed out loud and told them nobody had taught poor little me to write, and that they'd have to help me. But my greatest hold on the circus is Dramatic Reading. Apparently they have always been read to in a monotone, for they find my delivery most enchanting. So the offer is: a half-hour's story-reading a day, minus time wasted in waiting for them to come to order during the day. The minute I stand still and start staring at the clock, the refractory few become unpopular. I get lots of help in quieting down the room that way.

Geography. Not one understood one iota of the geography books they had been reading. I have practically stopped all formal geography (of which I know nothing anyway), and we have spent the first weeks learning what north, south, east & west mean and what a map is. We are studying our town; soon we shall be able to get a faint idea of the county.

Limits of Human Endurance. The color of my meditations depends somewhat on the time of day. Every morning at 6 I cry sleepily, "Oh, God, let me die! I cannot face it!" After breakfast, I trudge up the hill wondering how I can bear to face the brats, racking my overwrought brain as to how I can keep each class busy throughout the long, long day. Every evening I come home full of wonderful stories, some funny, some sad as hell, and filled with new ideas on how to get an idea into the poor little heads. Then, after dishes, I start to work on next day's plans. At 10, or more frequently midnight, I creep to bed like a licked cur, only to dream of teaching. How I hate it and how I love it.

How I love the kids, especially the worst of them--little Tommy who seems a perfect moron but has something in him that one longs to get out. My great days are those when Tommy suddenly comes to human life. The three Mathews children, whose home is run by a woman not their father's lawful wife, who has no time to care for children even when they are sick. They have ceased to be problems and are my best students now. And so many others--poor, underprivileged, mishandled creatures, and so worth careful attention. That is what makes it all so damnably hard. How can one teacher give 43 children the time and attention they need?

But if the above complaint sounds as though I were bitterly repenting, it is misleading. I am having a wonderful time, except I am tired. But most people are.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.