CHAPTER12

Schools and Library

The lazy little laggard who entertained the idea of not having to go to school when he moved with his pioneer parents into the new settlements around El Paso was due for a rude awakening. No sooner had the early patriarchs found shelter for the bed and board of their families than they brought out the readers, 'riters and 'rithmetics, and children between the ages of five and twenty-one were expected to attend school off and on, whether or not they were so inclined. The story of the schools follows much the same pattern in all of the early settlements: first, the home; then the organization of a school district and the building of a schoolhouse.

One might generalize by saying that it was the teacher that was of first importance. It was someone in the settlement who often took on the labors in his or her own home, or it sometimes was a wandering pedagogical peddler who tarried for a while, to be replaced as easily as he was engaged by someone who sold his wares for less. Those early teachers took up their abode in the settlements where they chanced to be, and they became an integral part of the community life. The first laws of child psychology were enforced by the hickory stick or the dunce's corner, and how long a teacher stayed was often determined by how well he was able to hold his own with a school full overflowing with ruffians of the first order. It is noteworthy, indeed, that these pioneers in the field of education were able to keep alive the spark of learning without the material accouterments which se so necessary in our modern conception of educational advancement.

The earliest school mentioned is one taught in Greene Township's area in 1840 by Mr. William Armstrong. It was a log cabin, located on Section 28, near Gabetown. According to a statistical report prepared by County Superintendent of Schools, Professor J. E. Lamb, in 1878, there were then in the township about 348 children of school age of whom about 290 were in school. Palestine also had a school before it became a township; Mrs. Clement Oatman taught this first school in her own home southwest of Secor's site, prior to the erection of the first schoolhouse in 1844. That new school was a small log hut with a stick and mud chimney. The early records of the school were destroyed in the fire which burned the large $30,000 brick hotel in Secor.

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