The schoolroom was large and bare with two wooden posts supporting the roof. The teacher sat at her desk on a raised platform at the wall opposite the entrance. The children sat at rows of desks (a row per grade) at right angles to the rear wall; in front of them an open space for recitation by class; blackboard on the wall and so forth. There were five grades in the single room. Teacher sat at her desk, ruler in hand to rap with or admonish. All the children studied their lessons aloud, or mumbled them. The room vibrated with a ceaseless hum, within which individual voices could be heard. Everything was free and easy; discipline rare. There was however a certain order of procedure. Came time for a class to recite. They flocked to the wall and stood in a row; neither foot nor head at first. Questions and answers concerning the lesson of the day. Teacher’s questions specific; pupils’ answers must be definite, categorical. Teacher was mild, patient; the answers were sometimes intelligent, more often hesitant, bashful, dull, or hopelessly stupid. Each answer was followed by a monotonous “go to the foot,” “go to the head;” and all the time the hum went on, the unceasing murmur, a thin piping voice here, a deeper one there, a rasping out yonder, as they pored over their primers, first readers, geographies, arithmetics; while now and again Teacher’s voice rose high, questioning the class on the rack, the children answering as best they could. This babel merged or deliquesced into a monotone; there seemed to be a diapason, resonant, thick, the conjoined utterance of many small souls trying to learn, entering the path of knowledge that would prove short for most of them. The children were all barefoot and rather carelessly clad; notably so in the matter of omissions. One thing is certain and the rest is lies: This school was of, for, and by the people.
The child was given his proper place in the lowest grade, or class, or whatever it was called. He took hold rather blithely. He seemed to feel the importance of his entry into this new world, so different from home. Little by little he seemed to feel that he belonged there; but he never succeeded in feeling that the school belonged to him except as to its externals. Somehow he did not fit into the curriculum or the procedure. He was of a pronounced, independent nature. He quickly became listless as to his own lessons. He seemed to be nothing but a pair of eyes and ears not intended for books, but for the world little and big about him. In this immediate sense he was almost devoid of self-consciousness. His normal place was at the foot of his class. But one day he awakened to the fact that unawares he had become interested, not in books, but in procedure; said procedure consisting in the oral examinations and recitations of the grades above his own, as they, in accordance with the arrangement of the schoolroom, stood directly in front of him, drawn up in line, undergoing the routine torture. He began to notice their irregular mass-effect and their separate persons. He followed their fortunes in going to the foot and going to the head. He transferred himself to them. He noticed, too, which girls were the prettiest and which boys were the gawkiest. He learned the names of all. He became solicitous of their personal fortunes, in their struggle for knowledge or their attempts to escape it. For him, it became a sort of drama, a sort of stage performance, and he began to note with growing interest what they said and what teacher said, which answers were correct, which were failures. Over and over he saw and heard this until he came to know the groundwork of what all the grades above him were struggling with. But as to his own lessons—Alas! Yet he followed the upper grades so intently that he became critical: What was this about the four men who built so many perches of stone wall in three days, and two other men who were to build some wall in six days? What did it amount to anyway? The real question was where was the wall to be built? For whom was it to be built? What was his name? What were the names of the men who were building the wall, (for it was becoming a real wall)? Were they Irish or Scotch? Where did they get the stone to build the wall? Did they get it from the rough quarry across the road from the schoolhouse? Did they gather up boulders from the fields? Was not this matter of four men and two men irrelevant? The information was too sparse, too unconvincing. He could not place the wall, and what good was any wall he could not see? And thus he went on, unaffected by the abstract, concerned only with the concrete, the actual, the human.
One evening when all were at home, a letter arrived addressed to Grandpa. He opened the envelope and read the letter aloud. It was from Teacher, and set forth with deep regret and concern that his grandson was a dull boy, that he was inattentive, would not study his lessons, was always at the foot of his class, but he was a nice boy. Could not Mr. List bring influence to bear to induce Louis to reform his ways? Would not a kindly word from him, concerning the need of education, have a moral effect? She had used all her powers of persuasion, and
