The first school that Prof. J.H. Allen, now our county superintendent, ever taught was in a log school house in the woods in Yadkin County. The benches were slabs from some saw mills and had no backs. The fire place was a large one and would accommodate sticks of wood as long as four feet.
Mr. Allen was then a large, fine looking young man not more than 18 years of age. When the school was about half out he had an attack of pneumonia and they said at the time came near not pulling through. But he came back in a short time and the first day after his return was a cold one. The boys had gone to the woods and cut and carried in several large round logs and piled them on the fire. When they were burning good and well, the whole pile rolled down and out into the floor. Such a commotion as was then and there made a picture on the youthful mind of ye editor that he has never forgotten it. We recall that the young teacher undertook to get the big logs back in position himself and that he exerted himself much on the task, and commented freely on the trials of a teacher and what he had to contend with.
All of which reminds us that in our recent travels about the county we have passed many school houses and at one we recall that some enterprising committeeman had put in a pile of wood. If there was wood at any other school house, we failed to notice it. Here about our town the folks are already stocked up with winter wood—many of them are. All the summer months daily wagons have come to town loaded with the finest dry wood, chopped last spring before the sap was up. One morning recently ye editor sat on his porch and heard three wood saws running at the same time, cutting up wood for winter use in the homes of the people.
Now to the point. Why should not the people of the county use the same common judgment about preparing wood for the schools that they use about preparing it for their homes. A mint of time is wasted by big boys at our schools preparing wood for the school room. Many of these boys need every moment of their time in school and to allow them to idle away their time out about a wood pile is not giving them the deal they should have.
Suppose you try this plan this year: See that your school is supplied with dry wood such as you use at your home, if you are one of those who use dry wood. Then have a saw, every neighborhood has one now, come and cut the wood up and then see that the teacher has the boys to pile some of it so that it will be dry at all time and ready for use.
The efficiency of our county schools depends on many things, some of them small, such as keeping the window light in and the floor swept. But no set of pupils can do honest, efficient work in a room that is not comfortably heated.
From the editorial page of The Mount Airy News, Sept. 15, 1921, J.E. Johnson and Son, publishers.
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