NYNIAGAR-FOLKS-L Archives

From: "Vee L. Housman" <>
Subject: [FOLKS] Teaching schooll for 50 years (1885-1935)
Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 22:02:33 -0400

Dear Folks,

I just "put to bed" the June issue of our Town of Porter Historical Society and the last newspaper article I had included in it was one that I had just transcribed of June 22, 1935 (68 years ago). It was regarding one of our local school teachers and principals who had just retired after 50 years. She started teaching in 1885 at the age of 17!

Regarding the education of children today in 2003, it might give you food for thought. The article follows. (Ellen Colangelo, who loves to wait for her own copy of the whole newsletter, you better delete right now! :-)
vee
Buffalo Courier Express, Buffalo, NY, June 22, 1935

LAYS DOWN POINTER AFTER HALF CENTURY OF SERVICE

Veteran Niagara Falls Teacher Called by Pupils, "Sincere, Wholehearted"

Courier-Express Niagara Falls Bureau

Niagara Falls, June 22-"To one who has devoted 50 years of life to guiding the stumbling footsteps of students over rocky and difficult paths of knowledge . . . who always has been sincere and wholehearted . . . who embodied in her teaching those pioneer principles which inspire the stalwart youth of America."

These are the words with which editors of the yearbook at the Senior High School here chose to dedicate this year's volume to Miss Mary A. Walsh, who is retiring from the classrooms after a half-century of instructing in the schools of Niagara County.

Is Popular Figure

It echoes the sentiment that has prevailed at dinners and other testimonials to Miss Walsh in the last few days and it supports the fact of a forward-looking nature which she revealed during an interview this afternoon.

The school scenes are rushing to a close. A few days more of marshalling students into examination rooms and then Miss Walsh must collect her mathematics books, and with a final farewell glance at the halls she has trod these last seventeen years depart for her home in North Tonawanda.

No rules of algebra, geometry or trigonometry will help her solve the problem that awaits solution, still active, what is she to do with herself?

Perhaps memories will help some. There's been a lot of unforgettable incidents since Miss Walsh, fortified with studies at the Lewiston Union School and Oswego Normal, in 1885 went into District School No. 12, near her paternal home in the Creek Road, Town of Lewiston, to be the school ma'am.

Just seventeen years old, she had six in the all-grades group of 30 who were older than she! But that's the way the grade schools were in those days, for some of the children were able to attend only the four months of winter school session, running from November 1st to March 1st. Not all could be present for the May 5th to September 5th semester.

Used No Rod

Those were the hickory rod days, but Miss Walsh never relied on such disciplinary instruments nor on slapping or pulling ears. Her prescription was persuasion and, in acute cases, turning them over their desks. For the most part her students were well behaved.

>From the district school, she went to Model City, then to the primary department at Youngstown's school, to Sanborn next as principal, continuing there nine years, to Youngstown as principal where she remained 22 years, and then to Niagara Falls. During her first year as principal at Youngstown, she changed the institution from the status of a common school to that of a regents' school.

The boys and girls she taught went forth and in time sent back their little boys and girls to be taught-and perhaps there were even some third-generation pupils. Hundreds of faces came and went and many there are who have achieved good things to reflect the training by Miss Walsh. They've spread into all walks of life and gone to the far corners of the globe. Not a few of them have taken to teaching, among them Miss Caroline Bullock, principal of the Cleveland Avenue School, this city.

What does Miss Walsh think as she mingles her thoughts of the past with her hopes for education in the future?

Believes in Direction

First of all, she thinks the children of today are "marvelous" and have better knowledge of things than those of a half century ago. But she doesn't wish to have them spoiled by educational methods which permit them to dictate what they should be taught rather than following the lead of the teacher. Don't misunderstand, she wants them to be taught to assume responsibility and to have freedom and to learn to do and think for themselves, but she believes the teacher, with her long experience is in the best position to give direction.

Ethics should be taught, Miss Walsh believes, and at the same time parents should be educated out of their belief that everything of a refining nature can be done in the classroom. Schools should refuse to permit themselves to be used as an agency for training children for future roles on the battlefield, and history everywhere should be taught not in terms of a succession of wars, but rather in terms of scientific, economic and sociological progress.

"Just now we are hearing too many references to the World War," Miss Walsh declared. "The schools should not only avoid keeping alive these prejudices, but furthermore should teach those things making toward a harmonious brotherhood of mankind."

The school classes should be smaller, with twenty to 25 pupils, so the teacher may work individually with the children, Miss Walsh believes.

Too many children are going on to college, whereas only those with the ability and mentality should do so, she said.

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• [FOLKS] Teaching schooll for 50 years (1885-1935) by "Vee L. Housman" <>