Obrien County IA Archives History - Books .....Chapter XII Educational 1914
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Book Title: Past And Present Of O'Brien And Osceola Counties, Iowa
CHAPTER XII.
EDUCATIONAL.
The educational feature was one of the earliest, as it is likewise one of
the chief and present, thoughts of the people of O'Brien county. They adapted
themselves to what they were able to do. Though they could not build a
sixty-thousand-dollar brick school building, they insisted on the school
nevertheless and built the shack school house, even as they themselves lived in
the shack shanty. They even held school in the old log court house. But the
primal fact remained that they kept school. In the simple town plat of Old
O'Brien, the old county seat in 1860, on the first fly leaf of record deed book
"A," the first deed record book of the county, a block is set apart for a
school
site. Clark Green and James Roberts did the same for Primghar when the town was
surveyed out with a four-foot lath, which was the fact. Indeed the school block
has been among the first blocks platted in every town in the county.
The schools of the county are under the immediate supervision of the county
superintendent. Prof. J. J. Billingsly is the present incumbent of that office.
This has been the one sacred office in the county, so considered and so dealt
with in fact, and has been kept largely out of and free of politics. The
elections to this office have resulted meritoriously. Its school superintendents
have mainly been persons of ripe experience along the lines of educational work.
For instance, Miss Ella Seckerson filled the office for ten years from January
1, 1892, to January 1, 1902, and prior to which time she had held a position as
one of the corps of teachers in the Sheldon high schools for many years. Miss
Nellie Jones was superintendent of schools for seven years, from January 1,
1902, to January 1, 1909, with a well equipped experience of fourteen years as
teacher and a large portion of the time as lady principal of the same Sheldon
high school. Prof. J. J. Billingsly, now completing his sixth year as county
superintendent, had served Primghar six years, Sanborn six years and Paullina
three years, as superintendent of their high schools. David Algyer,
superintendent six years, was school principal in Sanborn. Here is one period
alone of twenty-nine years wherein the office has been presided over and had the
ripest experience of four veteran educators of the county.
Educators who can and did supervise large bodies of children, dealing with
parents and boards and school subjects, were the ideal candidates for the still
larger powers of organization necessary to manage the machinery needed to
educate five thousand five hundred and ninety-nine children, according to the
last official report from this office; with supervisory business connected with
twenty-two boards; with about two hundred teachers; with about one hundred and
thirty-three rural school buildings; with about two . hundred school officials,
including school treasurers and secretaries, the various functions being like
companies, regiments, divisions and brigades, moving systematically with
military precision and with one common aim. We also note the fact that in each
case of the four superintendents above named, as likewise the earlier
superintendents mentioned below, their years of experience were in O'Brien
county schools, which gave to them the peculiar local knowledge of facts and
conditions within the county.
The high schools in the six main towns are now accredited schools, entitling
the high school graduates to enter the several colleges of the state without
further preparatory work.
Three of the high schools of the county. Sheldon, Hartley and Sutherland,
have met the requirements and have been appointed as normal training schools for
the rural school teachers, entitling those three high schools to receive an
annual appropriation of about seven hundred and fifty dollars each, or about
sufficient, or a little more, to pay a qualified instructor. These normal
training schools are intended to fill the same place for the rural school
teacher that the State Normal Training School at Cedar Falls furnishes to the
aspirants for high school positions. The Primghar high school was also so
designated in 1914.
Among the earlier county superintendents, Harley Day was superintendent of
the Primghar schools four years, Stephen Harris three years, Miss Bell Cowan two
years and C. H. Crawford two years. Thus we see' that in all eight of its county
superintendents' had had a large experience in O'Brien county public schools.
We mention these four first because they are the last and recent
superintendents, and have each had long terms in which to fully organize and
carry out the policies of our present magnificent school system under its modern
equipments. We should not, however, forget the very great service rendered by
the early and pioneer school superintendents from 1870, when the settlers
arrived, in the persons of Stephen Harris, D. A. W. Perkins, Jesse A. Smith, A.
B. Chrysler, Harley Day, David Algyer, C. H. Crawford and Miss Isabella Cowan.
These superintendents were each highly educated persons, and in each case had
had experience in the several schools of the county. Their terms were shorter
(except Mr. Algyer, who served six years) and were handicapped by the pioneer
conditions, buildings and equipments. We also note the fact that in every case
of all this large number their experience as teachers and educators was had in
our own O'Brien county schools.
The writer hereof saw in the early days of this county school houses built
with only a one-side slant roof. But, mark the fact, they kept school. The
writer, in the seventies, attended sundry lyceums, school programs and debates
in some of those primitive school buildings that would do credit to some of the
later contests for oratorical championships. An item elsewhere in this history
refers to the Baker Library Association, maintained for so long a period,
organized as it was in the very earliest day of the homesteader, and which is
even yet maintained at Sutherland as one of the definite educational features.
Relating to libraries, we might also add that each high school in the county is
equipped with a working library of reference works and volumes covering the
usual list of subjects found in most libraries. Even many of the rural schools
have libraries conforming to their measure, ranging from twenty to three hundred
volumes in the several country school buildings. The office of the county
superintendent, at the court house in Primghar, sets the example of six hundred
volumes of a well selected teacher's library, covering the desirable subjects.
We have spoken elsewhere of the laudable and appreciated work during now
sixteen years of George W. Schee, in his encouragement and large financial aids
in the various public schools of the county, of his prizes given in the way of
trips to Washington, the Buffalo Exposition, to Pike's Peak and the West, of
groups of the champion scholars in the public schools, as educational features,
and of his efforts in the education of loyalty and patriotism to the country, in
the furnishing of a flag, the Stars and Stripes, to be displayed on every school
house in the county, as an educational aid, as well as a high ideal in moral
uplift.
Indeed, all information, communication, moral uplift or training on any
goodly line, whether proceeding from the home, the church, the school, the
press, the courts or other sources, is educational. These desirable conditions
are everywhere to be seen, felt and enjoyed by our citizens.
The school buildings and equipments throughout the county have grown in
size, in value, in quality, and facilities proportionately as the county has
increased on other lines. In these very conditions we observe an education
within itself. This is especially notable in the construction of the twenty to
sixty-thousand-dollar brick school buildings in the several towns. No better
comparison of the relative conditions of, say, three periods in the school
development of one of our towns can be made than first a reference to the small
one-story frame school building, about the size of the usual rural school
building in the country, first erected in Sheldon in 1873, immediately as it
became a town; then the second building, still a wooden frame, but two stories
high, with still the stove heat and other items corresponding, and then the
final three-story brick structure, with a heating plant alone whose cost would
have built at least three school buildings like the first named, with all modern
features that go with it. Perhaps at this point we should make note of the one
great calamity to Sheldon's first modern brick building, which was burned in the
year 1904, it being indeed the only large school building ever burned or
destroyed in the county. We must also note how, like Chicago, before the embers
and ashes were cold, its more than duplicate was planned and carried at once to
completion. The school buildings and equipments and public developments, in
which we take a pride and which become all but sacred, may meet with disaster
and be destroyed, but the ideal sentiments back of them, and the determination
to rehabilitate and even again enlarge upon them, cannot be consumed or- blotted
out.
One item is noticeable in the construction of all our school buildings in
the several towns, namely, that they are all built not for a day, but, in size
and proportions in the different rooms and departments, for the growing future
of the years to come. For instance, the assembly rooms in the several buildings,
that now perhaps have from sixty to one hundred seats, are in fact built to hold
from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty, with all other details and
offices and accommodations to correspond. Also, for instance, while all the
towns in the county do not at this date conduct classes for the girls in
domestic science or the art of cooking, or a manual training in the trades for
the boys, yet the rooms are provided for this work and the idea of growth held
out, wrhich will all come as a certainty in due time.
The high school buildings in the county are now also equipped with
gymnasiums, thus taking into account the benefits of athletics, basket and base
ball and other games and, indeed, all those features belonging to recreation and
building up of the body. To these may be added the sundry connections of each
school through its several teams for physical and mental contest, in their
relations with the district, state and interstate leagues representing those
fields.
The schools of the county have also made much headway in meeting the
requirements of the sanitary laws and rules of the state board of health. At
this date there are about fifty modern heating and ventilating systems in the
rural school buildings and many are equipped with sanitary drinking jars and
individual drinking cups.
Our high schools have not only libraries of books, but are provided with
desirable daily newspapers, county papers and magazines. There are now ten
newspapers published in the county, which contribute much to general educational
advantages.
In addition to these direct school equipments, are numerous private.
libraries in the homes, as well as the daily papers found there, with other
magazines and periodicals finding their way to the school rooms. It is probably
a safe estimate to say that close to three thousand copies of daily papers are
taken in the homes and offices of the county.
O'Brien county has its full share of telephones and rural free deliveries,
all furnishing information and educational advantages not merely to the
children, but their parents, and even to the transient within the county.
The lecture courses and chautauquas have a good showing in this county.
Indeed it is not merely a showing, but continual courses from year to year and
for now about fourteen to sixteen years have been held in the larger towns, and
lesser and corresponding efforts in the smaller towns. Practically all the
leading educators, ministers, politicians and men of note on all lines have been
heard in one or other of the towns of the county.
We must not omit the large force of the church as an educator. This feature
has received its full notice in the sundry items of church history herein given.
The local press, consisting at this date of ten papers in the county, may well
be considered a part of the educational features. The press will be noticed in a
special article.
The several county superintendents since 1870 have held annual teachers'
institutes, of from one to two weeks. This is in the nature of a normal training
school, covering all those general questions found in the high and rural
schools, the subjects and classes being conducted by the county superintendent
and special educators employed, for which a fund is appropriated from the
revenues of the county. This institute also keeps well in hand all those proper
organizations throughout the county connected with school affairs, including
their relations with school officers, and other general questions and bodies.
There are also several parochial and church schools. The German Lutheran
church at Germantown, in Caledonia township, has for about thirty years
conducted a parochial school in connection with their large church. This school
is methodically arranged in grades and has all the facilities equal to a full
high school course. Indeed many of the branches taught, including the languages,
the higher mathematics, the classics and other higher studies, lift it well up
to the academic or even the collegiate standard. The township being practically
all German, that language is given precedence. The St. John's Lutheran
Evangelical church in Center township, as likewise the German Lutheran churches
at Calumet and Hartley, hold courses of study and regular school instruction in
connection with their churches. The Catholic church, as will be seen elsewhere,
does likewise for its people in its various churches in the county. The Friends
church in Highland township does a similar work along the lines of that society.
The following is a complete list of the county superintendents since 1860,
with the inclusive calendar years during which they served: Hannibal H.
Waterman, 1860; John J. Jenkins, 1861; George Hoffman, 1862; Moses Lewis,
1863-1868; Chester W. Inman, 1869; Stephen Harris, 1870-1872; D. A. W. Perkins,
1873; Jesse A. Smith, 1874-1875; A. B. Chrysler, 1876-1877: Harley Day,
1878-1881; David Algyer, 1882-1887; C. H. Crawford, 1888-1889; Isabella Cowan,
1890-1891; Ella Seckerson, 1892-1901; Nellie Jones, 1902-1908; J. J. Billingsly,
1909, and still serving.
RURAL SCHOOLS GROW SMALLER AS THE COUNTY GROWS OLDER.
The attendance in the rural schools of O'Brien county is much smaller than
fifteen or eighteen years ago. It is no uncommon thing to find from six to ten
pupils in a rural school. At this writing four adjacent schools in the center of
the county have fifteen, thirteen, nine and five, respectively. Fifteen years
ago many of these same schools had from twenty-five to thirty or more. It is no
fault of the educational administration of the county, or lack of interest in
education on the part of the people. It is rather the result of conditions. The
children of the older settlers are now grown up, with families of their own.
Eighteen years ago the heads of these now second generation families were still
many of them in the rural schools. Hundreds of this second generation have
during all the years gone to Minnesota, the Dakotas, Canada and everywhere west,
seeking the cheaper lands, and leaving the older people in the county with no
representatives in the schools. These same conditions are true over many parts
of Iowa.
Additional Comments:
Extracted from:
PAST AND PRESENT OF
O'Brien and Osceola Counties, Iowa
BY
HON. J. L. E. PECK and HON. O. H. MONTZHEIMER
For O'Brien County
AND
HON. WILLIAM J. MILLER
For Osceola County
VOL. I
ILLUSTRATED
1914
B. F. BOWEN & COMPANY, Inc. Indianapolis, Indiana
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