I debated with myself about whether or not to share the Featured Image. The photographic slide, from my father’s selection of hundreds—maybe thousands—is among the grittiest. There is even a hair there. But something about the dirt and vintage (circa 1973) adds an air of authenticity at a time when people use Artificial Intelligence to create unauthentically authentic art. (You get the point, yes?)
My father, uncle, and aunts would have attended this schoolhouse in Woodland, Maine. My grandmother was a teacher’s aide there, unless I am mistaken. I know she worked at a school somewhere. Washburn, if not?
I’ve read, and accept, that one-room schoolhouses offered the best overall education because of reinforcement. If, say, you got kids grades one to eight hearing the same lessons year after year, learning sticks so to speak. So a first-grader could hear what the teacher instructs the fifth-grade kids while he does his own assignments. Meanwhile that same fifth-grader gets a refresher listening to third- and fourth-grade lessons.