Keokuk County Iowa IAGenWeb - 1904 School Essay Contest

One mile north of the northwest limit of the town of Keota, Keokuk County Iowa, stands the schoolhouse where I attended school. It faces the south and is pleasantly located. The ground in front slopes down to the banks of Crooked Creek. The house is of the same general size and shape as the average Iowa schoolhouse. In size it is 20 x 24 feet having two front doors and a window between giving a pleasant view in that direction. Our schoolhouse was built in the year 1872. It was the last schoolhouse built in this township under the old school township plan and was built before there was enough pupils in the district to constitute a school district but was built at the time in order to have the township build it. This was the year when the electors voted to change from the school township plan to that of the independent districts. Captain Joseph Smith, who donated the acre of ground upon which the schoolhouse was built, was elected sub-director and served in that capacity until the change was made in the year 1874. At the time W.C. Smock, John Klein, and Geo. B. McCreary were elected directors. The name adopted was Independent District No. 6.

The schoolhouse is well built and has seven windows. The windows all have fairly good curtains. The blackboard is made of slate and it was through the efforts of W.C. Smock that the slate blackboard was procured from Mr. Stoffee who had it shipped from the east.

Our library is one of the best owned by any rural school in the township and contains thirty-seven volumes. Among them are books having the titles: “Around the World,” “Family of the Sun,” “Aunt Martha’s Corner Cupboard,” “The Great World’s Farm,” “Christmas Carols and Cricket on the Hearth,” and “Pilgrim’s Progress.”

An effort has been made to get a beautiful grove of trees in the schoolyard. The trees, forty-five in all, are nicely arranged around the school building and are all doing very well except the one which has been used to support a telephone wire. They are soft maple catalpa, plum, and some shrubs. The teacher and pupils have attempted to raise flowers and a vegetable garden. Radishes, lettuce, and onions were planted last spring. Some asparagus has been on the schoolground for three years.

The first teacher who taught in my school was Mr. John Fletcher Graham who is still one of the citizens of Keota and we all look up to him as one of the bright and shining lights of the twentieth century.

The town of Keota at that time had not yet provided a schoolhouse and the size of our school was increased by the attendance of pupils from Keota. Some of them no doubt became prominent persons and of the pupils belonging to the district many have become worthy citizens our county. One of the teachers, Dr. Eckly, became a physician. One of the pupils is at present a minister of the gospel; another was for a time a missionary in one of the schools in North Carolina. We have no doubt the farmers and stockmen who have come from our school are filling their stations in life as usefully as the average farmers and stockmen in the state.

A good board fence and a section of hedge surround the schoolyard except on the front where the fence is out of repair. There is no well or pump. The directors no doubt thought the children needed water. They also feared there was danger of pupils drowning each other in the well. Now if there would be a nice tank in the schoolhouse which could be supplied with ice water or lemonade in the summer, we would not see the pupils toiling along the road with a pail of water which might be clean by the time it reached the schoolhouse or it might be quite otherwise.

If the patrons of the school were only interested, I think by the time the town of Keota is extended this far north or farther our schoolhouse would be very suitable place to hold the meetings of the strategy board instead of having its members seated on dry goods boxes on the edge of the sidewalk. Or if it were considered not too good an idea, we can imagine in time there will be a centralization of the rural schools such as the educators are planning now.

We find that the pupils in the rural school to be well taught some of the things useful and necessary for them to know and which are not contained in “Readin,” “Ritin,” and “Rithmetic.” For instance, there are such studies as the following. The study of the habits of weeds and how to exterminate them. For everyone knows that before many years there will be a demand for just such knowledge as that.

For another, the study of good crops, how to grow them and how to make them profitable will be a very necessary thing to know. Then there are many other things that will be needed both for girls and boys in training them for the best use and best way of making the best of life. So that I believe that what is called “manual training” will be a large part of the work done in the rural schools of the future. And too, it will be found that the best is none too good to have for the school and we will find sufficient apparatus in our schoolrooms to explain everything and make the work much easier for the teacher and pupils as well as more beneficial. Our teacher will be trained to teach the best things, the most useful and most beautiful things and to teach in the best and easiest way. And the parents will visit the school and be more anxious and interested to visit and see for themselves what their children are doing in the schoolroom. The school board will realize that the education of the young is what constitutes the best welfare and makes the best citizens of the United States.

Hail the day when our schoolhouses are as comfortable and as beautiful and attractive as the best and most modern homes and with their surroundings may each one of them constitute an inspiration to all passers by and a source of pride to everyone in the community. And I want to make a plea tonight that the boys and girls of America be taught to know that the America of the future will be what the boys and girls in our school today make it.

Let our schools arouse a righteous ambition in the children to be just such children as America will be proud of now and can be relied upon in the future, this which is the most vital part in the training of American children, the possession of character in tis truest and best sense. This is my plea.