A few weeks ago the writer visited the dentist conducting a
State Board of Health Free Dental Clinic at a rural school in an eastern
county. Several mothers were present with their children, and while awaiting
their turn at the dental chair the conversation turned to general school
topics, such as the antique desks and poor heating arrangements, in an
otherwise good three-teacher building in a well-to-do community. Knowing the
young lady who was principal there the past year to be an exceptionally capable
woman, we inquired how it was she did not get in behind the committee and make
them bring the equipment and surroundings up to match the building. The question
happened to be directed to the wife of the chairman of the committee.
“Oh, the committee couldn’t stand her. So they fired her in
the middle of the session.”
With considerable amazement, we inquired what sort of
conduct the teacher had been guilty of to merit such drastic punishment.
Replied Mrs. Committeeman: “The first thing she did was
demand that two pit privies be built on the schoolhouse plat, and you know they
would have cost $40 at least, and Buck [her husband] said it was a useless
waste of money, and so paid no attention to her. The next thing she demanded
was three jacketed stoves, one for each room.”
At this point another woman from the same neighborhood
interrupted excitedly, “Cousin Buck said he never heard of such a thing!”
But the blow that shipped the teacher back to Pa’s for the
remainder of the school year came down on her like a thousand bricks, when she
forced the pupils to sit quietly at their desks at noon and spend 20 minutes
eating their lunch, packing the scraps back into the baskets to be carried home
for the pigs, thus teaching a practical lesson in thrift. The prevailing
custom, of course, as in most rural schools, was for the children to scatter
around on the cold ground outside regardless of weather, taking pot luck with
the tribe of dogs always on hand.
To shorten this story, it may be said that the chairman
called a meeting of the committee forthwith and informed the principal that she
was “fired,” to take effect at once. Traditions must be upheld, and none so
sacred as the way their daddies have always run the average school, be it city,
town or country,--in the opinion of the school board the teacher is employed
chiefly to obey others. We were just warming up to remark that they would still
be ploughing with wooden sticks if somebody had not had the courage to at least
try something else, when Mrs. Committeeman’s 10-year-old boy was called by the
dentist. Four of the child’s permanent teeth were found badly decayed. After an
hour’s hard work on the front porch of this schoolhouse that hot July day, 17
miles from the county seat, three of the four teeth were saved for the child
but the fourth tooth had to be extracted, thus making one-quarter of his mouth
a cripple for life.
At this point, we demanded to know why the head of the family
and chairman of the school committee did not have interest enough at least in
his child’s teeth to come to the dispensary. The answer was that he was
spending a month at one of the expensive health resorts in western North
Carolina.
Here is a man worth $50,000. A successful farmer, owning one
of the finest farms in his county (to prove it his barn is twice as big as his
dwelling house); educated at one of the great State colleges. Educated did we
say? Graduated is the word to use. And yet his college training and his success
as a farmer have not taught him a thing about the great fundamental things of
life, not even to the point of caring for the health of his own child. As a
school committeeman he is a tyrant. At home he is a kind father, but indifferent
to the essentials of fatherhood.
This man’s type is duplicated in every township in the
State, otherwise some other story would have filled this space. Find him and
see if he cannot yet be educated.
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