| Sunny Side Up Aug. 28, 2002 �2002, Kathleen Gibson School days, school days� I recently read an old woman�s memoir of her childhood years. My neighbor, Bill, loaned me the book, a photocopy of an original scribbler filled with sixty-some handwritten pages. His Aunt Kathleen, born in England more than a hundred years ago, authored it. She wrote beautifully, this other Kathleen, immersing me instantly in the Edwardian English countryside. In the scent of jasmine. In the sights of horses and carriages and dusky old lamplighters carrying long poles and trudging through the streets at twilight. In the sounds of preaching on city street corners and the muffin man�s call as he plied his trays of freshly baked goods from door to door. �Fresh muffins! Hot scones! Crumpets!� I shuddered at Kathleen�s recollection of her first day of school. For a small misdemeanor, she was made to wear a tall duncecap and sit for most of the day on a stool at the class front. She behaved after that, she said. Her favorite headmistress was a tall woman who kept the whole school under her wing like a mother hen. Every so often she swept into a classroom and proceeded to rouse the fading students with her irrepressible personality. Kathleen describes the sight of the woman�s long crimson velvet skirt dusting the floor behind her as she strode the wide halls. She also writes with delight of a later Christmas pageant when she discovered her costume had been made over from that that same velvet skirt. And she describes a less favorite teacher, a stern, unfair woman who was accustomed, on the long, chilly days of winter, to leaning on the fireplace grate to warm her backside. The grate was regularly removed in spring, and one warm day the teacher forgot its absence, leaned out of habit, and toppled backwards into the cold fireplace. The entire class erupted in cheers and whistles. Kathleen wrote that the punishment that followed was well worth the unforgettable sight. She was at school the day King Edward VII died in 1910. The students were summoned from their classes to hear the news from the town crier. Back and forth he ran, ringing his bell in wide arcs and calling, �The King is dead. The King is dead. Long live the King!� She could never understand the contradiction, she said. I almost heard a chuckle. The memoirs ended with Kathleen�s immigration to Saskatchewan in her late teens. The world was at war. I closed the book with regret. I wished I could have known her. Her beautifully curved letters had reached through the years and tattled on her wit and personality. I wasn�t surprised at all to hear that she eventually became a teacher. Kathleen�s memoirs made me wonder what people will be reading about today�s classrooms a century from now. I don�t know, but I�m certain of this: both teachers and students need our prayers to make it through this new school year. They have mine. And yours? You can respond to this column at [email protected] |
 |