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Curriculum Units:

Dreams of a Barefoot Boy: 1890 - 1911

In the fall of 1896, I entered the Lincoln school, little aware that I was starting on a road in formal education which would not terminate until 1929 when I finished courses at the Army's War College in Washington, D.C. What I learned at the start would not remain static. In the third of a century between my first and last school was compressed a series of revolutions-political and economic, social and scientific-which were to transform the human environment of the entire globe.

--Dwight D. Eisenhower

     Going to school in a small Midwestern town 100 years ago was, in some respects, very different from today; in others, little has changed. The goal of public education was not to prepare young people for a career, as it is today. Rather, students labored to perfect their Spencerian penmanship and struggled to master the basics of spelling, reading, and "ciphering" (arithmetic)-what we term the "three R's" today. Most members of the community agreed that common sense and hard work rounded out a "good" common-school education.

     Religious education was well integrated into the public school curriculum. The school day generally began with the teacher's reading a Bible verse to the class. McGuffey's Readers, a popular textbook series of the time, were filled with stories and poems that taught religious and moral lessons. Another common theme was "civic virtue," what we call good citizenship today. It was considered the parents' duty to insure a "proper" education for their children, and, in turn, obedience and devotion to parents were important values that were emphasized in school. Classes began at 9:00 in the morning; however, before-school chores began much much earlier than that-before daylight. Deane Malott, an Abilene boy born to a prosperous "north side" family in 1898, recalls cleaning the "clinkers" from the furnace; building a fire in the kitchen stove; feeding and currying the horses; feeding the chickens and gathering eggs; cleaning the barn and the hen house; feeding the dog; hitching up the horse; and practicing the piano-all before leaving for school in the morning! The first bell of the day rang at 8:30. A second bell, at 9:00, prompted students to line up in front of the school doors and march silently, single file, to their classes.

     Classrooms were often dark and dreary places that buzzed with the steady hum of student recitations. The competitive spirit of a spelling bee helped to break the monotony of lessons, and a discipline problem for the teacher became lively entertainment for the class. Because school kitchens did not exist yet, students walked home for lunch and returned for the afternoon session. At that time it wasn't considered proper for boys and girls to play on the same playground at recess.

     In general, Kansans of 1900 were a literate population; however, relatively few completed a four-year high school education. In the early years of the twentieth century, an eighth-grade education was considered adequate, and it was certainly no disgrace to leave school after the fifth or sixth grade. High school was largely a female domain. Girls enrolled in the "normal" training program to prepare them to teach in the county's one-room schools. For boys, it was far more practical to get a job and begin to earn a living. Farm boys rarely attended high school because their labor was needed at home. Boys who expected to become professionals, such as lawyers or doctors, finished high school and went on to college. For the majority of young people, however, high school was, quite simply, an impractical luxury.

     A typical daily schedule of classes in 1900 included Latin or German, English, algebra, and geography. The teachers, and occasionally the school superintendent, took turns leading Bible devotions in a classroom called the "chapel." From time to time, the superintendent visited classrooms as a highly visible deterrent to bad behavior.

     High school students of this era participated in many of the same activities as high school students today. They wrote and acted in plays and musicals; worked on the yearbook; played an instrument; belonged to a variety of clubs; enrolled in debate; and competed in sports like baseball and football. Basketball was a new sport that was popular with the girls. Neither the school nor citizens took much interest in school athletics. Students who wanted to play a sport bought their own uniforms and personal equipment. Money for other sport-related expenses was raised through small membership dues and gate receipts.

     Teaching wasn't considered a real profession nor did teachers make much money. A college education and professional training were not requirements for common-school teaching, although high school teachers generally had a college degree. In addition to a basic proficiency in the three R's, a teacher was expected to ". . . whip the bullies into submission . . . and hold his own against the district's champion in ciphering and spelling matches."¹ Teachers were expected to be upstanding role models in their communities-demonstrated by regular church attendance and a strict avoidance of card playing, dancing, or using profanity. Not surprisingly, in many communities, the turnover rate for teachers was very high.

     Dwight Eisenhower was an intelligent boy who sometimes found school to be dull. He didn't take school as seriously as he should have, but he managed to earn respectable grades without trying very hard. In the Eisenhower home, getting a good education was a family priority. All six boys, from an early age, were encouraged to go on to college which was highly unusual for the time. The Eisenhower boys knew that their parents wouldn't be able to afford to send them to college, and they began to plan accordingly.

     At Lincoln Elementary School, Dwight's favorite subject was spelling, followed closely by arithmetic. His worst subject was penmanship, and throughout his life he was famous for his indecipherable scrawl. During high school, he excelled at plane geometry, so much so that his teacher allowed him to develop his own propositions and solve the problems in his own way. Dwight's real passion was reserved for reading history, especially ancient history and biographies of famous military men. As a boy, he needed no encouragement to read. In fact, his mother Ida finally resorted to locking his history books in a cabinet-which he unlocked at his pleasure once he found the key-because he neglected his chores.

     Dwight loved sports and excelled at them, especially football and baseball. When he was a freshman, he fell and scraped his knee. The small wound quickly developed into a medical crisis that threatened his life. Dr. Tracy Conklin declared that the leg would have to be amputated, but Dwight refused. He would rather have died than be unable to play his sports. Miraculously, he recovered and repeated his freshman year because he had missed so much school. He graduated in 1909 from AHS.

     Dwight's burning ambition for a college education led him, eventually, to apply for and receive an appointment to West Point. With it, the direction of his life was changed forever.

     Recommended Reading from At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends: 36-37, 39-43, 68, 77-82, 93-102.

     ^{1Lewis Atherton, Main Street on the Middle Border (Bloomington, IN: University Press, 1954), p. 25.}

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