By NANCY LAW ANDERSON

Special to The Herald-Whig

Read this interview with 97-year-old country school student and teacher Florine Luckel Law and decide for yourself.

It was 1916 when 6-year-old, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Luckel headed off with big sister Mildred and her father in the family horse and buggy to her first day of school.

She would swell the student body population to 10 at Washington School, the one-room schoolhouse everyone called "Corner School" east of Camp Point. She would finally get to find out first-hand what went on in a real classroom -- an experience she eagerly anticipated.

The moment she walked through the school's big double doors, her teacher, Miss Knoblock, gave her a welcoming hug and introduced her to the nine other students. Instantly, Florine knew her goal of becoming a teacher had not been a mistake.

She loved the routine of entering the classroom each morning, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and then settling in to share textbooks with the other first-grader, Kenneth Hunsaker. At a time when telephones were a relatively recent technological development and the Model T Ford was still an amazing new-fangled invention, the 10 students at Corner School worked hard to master a myriad of facts deemed important by Adams County educators.

Florine said each school day began at 9 a.m. and was filled with lessons that included reading, penmanship, arithmetic, grammar, geography, history and civics. As if that weren't enough, upper-grade students had additional classes in orthography (language rules), agriculture, Illinois history and physiology.

With a twinkle in her eye, Florine pointed out that penmanship lessons never immediately followed recess, because Miss Knoblock said that each scholar's hands might be heated up from the excitement of play -- thereby, not producing the best penmanship possible.

At Corner School, students looked forward to helping each other; this was both fun and efficient, Florine said, because each student got to use her/his expertise to help other students. Of course, it helped Miss Knoblock deal with lesson plans for as many as eight different grade levels and 11 subjects.

Florine smiled at the fact that this form of "cooperative learning" was happening long before such techniques were advocated in teaching methods classes in college.

It was 16 years after her first day as a student at Corner School that Florine began appreciating her childhood country school experiences for a different reason. After graduating from a two-year teaching program at Western Illinois State Teachers College in 1932, she was hired to be the official school marm at Brushy School -- another Adams County country school a few miles north of Coatsburg.

She soon found out that being a student was much easier than being a teacher; writing lesson plans for the multiple subjects covered in grades one through eight was only part of the challenge. Florine borrowed her father's car to drive the eight miles from Camp Point to Brushy each day, arriving early enough to carry in the coal and get the fire started in the pot bellied stove before classes began.

At times even getting to work proved to be a feat. She remembers driving on dirt roads on snowy days proved to be so hazardous that sometimes she had to stay overnight with a family who lived close to Brushy School. She points out that her 16 students didn't mind the snowy weather, since they could ride their sleds to school instead of having to walk.

It would be many years before buses became a routine part of school life for students living in the country.

Florine managed to make her work a bit easier when she figured out she could pay a student who lived nearby a dollar a week to start the fire each morning. Even though she was paid only $75 a month, she says the dollar a week was money well spent, because she got to sleep a few minutes longer each morning.

Brushy School, unlike Corner School, had a bell tower, so each week a different student had the honor of ringing the bell to signify the beginning of the school day. Florine warmly remembers that during these years, education was thought of as a privilege and her students wanted very much to succeed.

Since the school had been endowed with a piano, after reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, the first activity of the day was singing. As Florine played the piano, students sang popular tunes like "I've Been Working on the Railroad" and "America, the Beautiful."

Next, one responsible student was assigned the task of passing out the appropriate books to students. As students listened intently, Florine would then present information for the specific subject and grade level. Inspired by her teacher, Miss Knoblock, she used the method of having her students help each other master the knowledge at hand.

Brushy was also equipped with a recitation bench -- a long church pew kind of seat -- which she used when working with five or six students at a time. This was undoubtedly a forerunner to today's classroom areas designated as specialized learning centers.

When country school students in the early 20th century had breaks from classroom activities, they weren't playing computer games or rushing out to the basketball court. Instead, the most popular Brushy School recess diversion was a game called "handy over," in which a student would throw a ball over the bell tower and then run around to try to catch it on the other side of the tower.

Students actually gained several benefits from playing this seemingly simple game. Eye-hand coordination improved, it was a great cardio workout and students learned to share the ball.

The ultimate educational goal, as Florine saw it, was to have each student pass the eighth-grade final exam, a standardized proficiency test administered each spring by the Adams County superintendent of schools.

After much preparation for the exam, Florine had to take all of the eighth-graders attending Brushy to another school to be tested, since a teacher could not give the exam to her own students. Just as today's standardized exams are carefully guarded and students vigilantly monitored, the same was true in the 1930s.

If an eighth-grader failed after three attempts to pass this 60-question exam, she/he had to repeat eighth grade until they did. It is not surprising that some students had trouble passing, with questions like: "How, when and from whom was the following territory acquired: Louisiana, Florida, Alaska, Philippine Islands, Gadsden Purchase" or "Write the five rules for pronunciation."

Students who succeeded were rewarded with a district-wide graduation/picnic celebration held in August at Bailey Park in Camp Point. As Florine talked about this exam mandated in the 1930s, she commented that it sounds much like the accountability part of the federal government's current "No Child Left Behind" law.

Florine had indeed chosen the right goal back in 1916; she loved teaching and went on to teach all eight grades at Brushy School through 1935. She then taught an additional 27 years -- most of those at Maplewood School in Camp Point.

Even though she has been retired for 30 years and is 97, she still keeps abreast of current educational trends. Many times she chuckles when she hears or reads about a "new" approach to teaching math or spelling or English, because it was a method she used in a country school long ago.

With that mischievous smile, she wisely states, "If you wait long enough, everything old is new again."

One of Florine's favorite possessions is a quilt given to her for Christmas by her 1934 Brushy students. Each square in the quilt contains a student's name, hand embroidered by either the student or her/his mother. Seventy-four years later, she still occasionally hears from her Brushy students.

Though in bad repair, Brushy School still stands three miles north of Coatsburg. (The road is now paved.) Washington (Corner) School was demolished many years ago.

Nancy Law Anderson, a retired high school teacher, is the daughter of Florine Luckel Law and may be contacted at nlanderson2@cox.net.