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Walking the Back Roads of Addison County: A Tribute to the One-Room School

Tuesday July 17, 2007

By Larry Johnson

    My father never tired of telling the story about a Miss Titus, apparently a severe disciplinarian devoid of a sense of humor, who arrived to teach at the original Weybridge # 2 School on Thompson Hill Road.

     Miss Titus, who was from Granville, Vt., provoked a revolt, it seems, within the small student body with her stern discipline and sour demeanor. As my father told the story, Miss Titus let the 20 or so students out for a morning recess, and, 15 minutes later, when she tried to ring them back into the school, found herself at the center of an insurrection.

     Joining hands, the girls and boys circled the small school for the better part of the morning, chanting “Old Lady Titus came over the Mountain to fight us.” This continued until Miss Titus’s spirit was properly tamed and she began pleading with the kids to return to their seats.

     It’s a great story but I doubt that it happened quite the way my father told it. He was a gifted story teller with a true talent for embellishment.

     The one-room school was not a democratic institution. I know because I spent eight years in one, pretending to learn the basics of survival in a despotic environment. Sometimes the despot was benevolent and kind and sometimes not.

     My father’s school, a stone structure, was torn down before my academic career began, and a stick-built replacement was raised just a few hundred yards further up the hill on Thompson Road. When I began first grade---pre-school hadn’t been invented yet---in the fall of 1949, the school had already been around for quite a while.

     For several years, Weybridge #2 and Weybridge Hill Schools were completely separate systems, each serving all eight grades. Later on, when bussing came into existence, the schools were divided into four grades each. As I remember it, the first four grades went to the Hill and everyone else went to the Valley.

     My first grade teacher, a Mrs. A. was less than an inspiring presence and was, I believe, the pedagogical descendent of Miss Titus of my father’s day. To put a nice spin on it, she was unpleasant and the kind of disciplinarian that no parent would tolerate today. She was especially upset with me because my Grandmother Johnson had taken it upon herself to teach me to read. Apparently, pre-school learning was a no-no as far as Mrs. A. was concerned. Because of her unbridled temper and her fiery red hair, we referred to her, behind her back of course, as “Torchy”.

     There were,  perhaps, 20 students spread out among the eight grades, and it was not impossible to find yourself in a grade all by yourself. Grades didn’t really matter anyway, because the learning process, what there was of it, was holistic and open to all participants. It was impossible to be in a small room with all the grades crowded together, without being involved in all that was going on around you.

     The “new” Number 2 School was nearly as primitive as its stone predecessor. There was no running water---this was hauled in buckets from the Thompson farm---and, of course, no indoor plumbing. The outhouse was an attached, unheated affair and served dual duty as disciplinary cell. Provoke Torchy and it was entirely possible to do solitary confinement in the outhouse---no matter the temperature.

     As I said, the “big boys” were allowed to venture up the hill to the Thompson farm in order to retrieve drinking water. On more than one occasion, the team would be gone for hours and a search and rescue effort would be undertaken. Sometimes none of them would come back until school was adjourned for the day.

     One warm spring day, Kirk Fiske and I were elected to go and, since it was one of those rare, sunny March days when the temperature has climbed into the high 40s and the brooks are ice free and happily  babbling, Kirk and I decided to take the scenic route to the Thompson farm. Several hours passed before Kirk’s father Jack, who was tapping trees in Kenny Thompson’s sugar orchard, spotted us and sent us back to school to face the music.

     The one-room school concept has potential, I believe, as a brilliant learning format, given the right conditions. Eight grades learning together can be reinforcing and the material being taught, repeated over and over, will eventually imprint on the lower grades. However, accountability has to be an integral part of the system. Teachers that I experienced were accountable to no one, other than the superintendent of schools who made infrequent trips to inspect the facility. Many of the teachers, in those days, had minimal education---frequently just high school graduates---and had limited interest in teaching certain subjects. Our first male teacher, a Mr. Brock, came to the school when I was in eighth grade. He soon discovered that we were woefully ignorant of arithmetic, and realized that those of us soon to enter high school would be at a disadvantage.  He decided to suspend all subjects except mathematics, and it is fortunate that he did, otherwise I would still be trying to negotiate my way through first year algebra. As it was, I had trouble enough with high school math, as my excellent science and math teacher, John Wesley, could testify to.  

     The one-room school, at its best, had the rough and tumble atmosphere of a large family. At its worst, it had a hierarchical system  that destroyed individualism. Being a little different, eccentric or weak and, like in any chicken yard, you could find yourself at the bottom of the pecking order. But the school was also a microcosmic world that inspired and required creativeness. Sand lot softball was a spontaneous affair and there were no parents there to ruin it for  us. We  played for the fun of it. On nice warm days the resident teacher might take us on a nature hike or move the class room to the cow pasture that surrounded the school. In the winter there was sledding on the hill across the road and sometimes, after school, we would skate on Lemon Fair, start a bonfire and roast marshmallows and hot dogs.

     There was much learning that went on outside of the classroom. In order to survive eight years in this little community, one had to learn to negotiate for status, make concessions for the greater good and to develop myriad other skills that would stand us in good stead throughout our lives. It was a forge that distilled the dross from our youthful egocentrism, for the most part, and turned us into useful members of the larger society.   

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