Education of days past included fewer choices, more discipline

By Nick Thomas, 17, and Josie Belant, 15, with contributions from Marty Gray, 11; Erin Mahaney, 11, and Kelly Sprouse, 11.

This is the first in a pair of stories called "Bridging Generations," which compares the experiences of senior citizens when they were kids to the experiences of kids today. The series is made possible in part by a grant from Kiwanis of Marquette.

Education has been the basis of human society since the beginning of time. Whether it was cave-people learning to start fires or modern students balancing chemical equations, much of who we are as a society depends on what we are taught.

To better understand where education has been and where it should be headed, 8-18 Media interviewed two senior citizens about their school experiences.

Theresa Rose, 73, of Marquette, attended Northern Michigan University from kindergarten through high school. Pierce was a "laboratory" school where NMU students trained to be teachers. Rose went on to graduate from NMU and became a high school science and math teacher. She taught in Michigan for about 12 years and then taught in Texas until her retirement in 1993.

John Maitland, 91, of Marquette, attended Negaunee schools from kindergarten though ninth grade. As a sophomore, he transferred to a military school in Minnesota and spent the rest of his high school years there. After that he went to NMU for pre-dentistry for two years then transferred to the University of Michigan for a year in dentistry. He then transferred to Michigan Technological University where he graduated with a degree in chemical engineering. He worked around the nation as a sales engineer for the Bristol Company and retired to the U.P. in 1977.

Less variety in classes
Sixty to 80 years ago, the length of class periods and the entire school day for kids was about the same as today. However, the variety of classes offered was different.

Rose says there were two routes students could take when she was in school.

"You either went the academic route, which I did, or you went for the business route," she said. "We didn't have the range of classes that kids nowadays have to choose from.

"I wish I had some of the opportunities that you kids have now to learn. Having a planetarium in your school I think is tremendous," she said, referring to Marquette Senior High School. "I never saw a planetarium before in my life until I got out of this town, and now to have one in your school... To have swimming in your gym classes...And the sciences that you can take..."

Maitland was provided with little more than the basics.

"We had music. We had a teacher who used to come around to the classroom. We had to have gym class. But I don't remember gym class until I got up to junior high, like eighth grade," Maitland explained. "I was happy with what we had."

Beware of the truant officer
Public schools are currently cracking down on attendance. Whether by issuing after-school detention, requiring Saturday school, or reducing grades, schools are trying to control unnecessary absences. Maitland recalls a time when he skipped school in third or fourth grade to go to the circus.

"The kids in the Catholic school for some reason or another got out of school so they could go to the circus. And I had a family living next to me who had a big family, and they said to me when we went home from school for lunch, 'You want to go to the circus?' They didn't have to ask me twice."

Unbeknownst to Maitland, his mother found out he had skipped. She asked if his conscience was bothering him, and he told her no. A couple days later, his teacher asked him to provide an excuse for his absence.

"I had to go to my mother for an excuse," Maitland said. "My mother said, 'I don't have any reason to give you an excuse.' All the while she knew I had skipped school to go to the circus. So this was her form of punishment for me to have to confess. That wasn't bad enough, but we had a truant officer in town, and she had the truant officer nail me after school one day, and he threatened to throw me in jail if I skipped school again. I never skipped school after that."

The local hardware store owner doubled as the truant officer.

"This man, if you skipped school or didn't appear at school, his job was to go to your house and find out why you weren't at school," Maitland explained. "He never put anybody in jail or anything like that. He put on a good show and scared the daylights out of you and that was all."

Paddles and rulers
There were other disciplinary actions that would not be considered acceptable today. Rose remembers a form of discipline from her teaching days that was common in schools but unacceptable to her.

"When I first went to Texas in '67 or '68, believe it or not they had paddles - and I mean paddles - that they spanked the kids with, especially the young ones," Rose recalled. "If the teachers in high school were big enough, they even spanked the big ones.

"I never liked that kind of discipline because I always wanted my kids to respect me. I always told them, I'll respect them if they respect me. When they prove they can't be respected, well then we'll go from there."

Maitland recalls one type of physical punishment and the teacher who dished it out.

"My knuckles got banged with a ruler," he said. "I'm thinking of my fourth grade teacher. Her name was Miss Connors, and she could rap that ruler in a hurry and you shut up quick."

But Maitland is not bitter.

"If I got rapped on the knuckles, it was for a good reason," he said. "I was probably talking when I should have shut up, or not paying attention. I deserved it. We were taught we only talked when we were asked to speak."

Rose reinforced the idea that relationships between teachers and students were more formal when she went to school.

"Overall I would say respect for teachers dwindled over the years. I know from personal experience, that that has a lot to do with family life. When I grew up, my parents never talked anything bad about the teachers in front of us kids. That was forbidden. As far as we were concerned, whatever the teacher said was right," she said.

Fewer sports but looser requirements
Participation requirements for sports weren't as strict in Maitland's day as they are today. At most schools today, athletes need to meet a certain grade standard to play, but that wasn't the case for Maitland.

"Grades had nothing to do with it," he said.

Nor did kids have to pay to play.

"The school paid for the uniforms and took them on the trips," he said.

According to Maitland, the only sports available through the schools were football and basketball.

"No baseball team, no hockey," he said.

What Rose remembers most about high school athletics is that girls' sports were intramural while the boys' team competed with other schools.

"Girls didn't have sports like they have now," Rose said. "The only thing the girls had was the athletic association, which met after school once a week. And you had to get permission from your parents, and a lot of parents didn't like you staying after school."

Regardless of fewer options in sports in the past, they were just as important to small town communities as they are today.

"The top basketball player was the hero in town," Maitland said. "Everybody looked at him. They were well respected. Basketball was the main sport.

Glad they grew up when they did
Rose says that education has improved in some ways over the years.

"The buildings are so much nicer now. They've got air conditioning, they're safer than they were in the old days. They're not made out of wood. I think the education of teachers has improved, especially elementary teachers. They have better curriculum," she said.

In other ways it has gotten worse.

"When they dropped the dress code, discipline went down the drain with it," Rose said. "I think more stress should be on reading, writing and arithmetic, especially grammar."

When weighing the pros and cons of education in both eras, Rose concludes that she is glad she grew up when she did.

"There are many times I wouldn't want to have the peer pressures kids have nowadays," she said.

As for Maitland, he believes that he was provided with a good education, but he says he did not take as full advantage of it as he should have.

"I wish I had gotten better grades at the time because when you go looking for a job that's one of the things they look for is your grades. The more you learn the better off you are," he said.