There was a time when teachers earned $2 a month, boarded with farm families and, if they were women, had to quit their jobs once they married.
The school day started with a prayer and a Bible reading, and staring down from the wall was a portrait of the incumbent president, Abraham Lincoln.
This week, 22 4th graders from Butterfield Elementary School in Libertyville traveled back in time to 1862 and spent 1 1/2 hours as Civil War-era schoolchildren, under the stern tutelage of schoolmarm Barbara Molzahn, who wore a hoop skirt and carried a hickory switch that she slapped into her palm like a cop with a billy club.
Molzahn was playing the mistress of Grove School, a replica of a one-room schoolhouse that sat near what is now the corner of Milwaukee Avenue and Glenview Road from 1846 to 1940. The school is on the grounds of The Grove, a national historic landmark in the Glenview Park District.
To start the day, she rang a handbell, a signal to her students to line up at the door. She arranged them in two lines, one each for boys and girls. Then she sent the girls in to take their seats.
“This is 1862, so we have good manners,” she reminded the students. “The manners in 1862 are to always let ladies go first.”
After a prayer and a reading of the Golden Rule, Molzahn walked around the room carrying wooden plates with the names of children who attended Grove School in the 19th Century. She hung one around each student’s neck.
When she reached Ashley Porter, she gave her the nametag of Jeannette Stackpole, the daughter of the local carpenter.
“Your father made this lovely schoolhouse,” Molzahn said. “Did he make anything else?”
“Yes, he made our chairs and our house,” Ashley answered, perfectly in character.
“I’m sure they’re lovely!” Molzahn exclaimed brightly. Then it was time for some old-fashioned discipline.
“I spend a lot of time with the boys,” Molzahn said, picking up her hickory switch.
She singled out Ryan Hoffman, who was wearing the nametag of Flint Kennicott, the class troublemaker of the original Grove School. Flint had been caught swearing in the schoolyard.
After asking the girls to cover their ears, she said “Flint, I understand you called another boy a gol-darned polecat.”
“Flint” confessed, and Molzahn made him stand in front of the class with a bucket over his head. After all that, it was time for lessons.
The students first wrote out their names with quill pens dipped in ink made from walnut juice and vinegar.
Then they recited from “McGuffey’s Third Eclectic Reader” and figured math problems with a piece of chalk and a slate. Molzahn also taught her class a little geography.
Using her hand to represent Illinois, she recited this maxim:
“To the east lies the Indiana Prairie, to the south lies the Ohio River, to the west is the Mighty Mississippi, to the north is our neighbor Wisconsin, and smack dab in the middle,” she cried, clapping her hands together, “is our fine state of Illinois.”
The day concluded with a spelling bee between the boys and the girls, which ended in a tie.
Even 90 minutes in a one-room schoolhouse was enough to convince most of the 4th graders that they prefer their 20th Century style of learning.
Writing with a quill pen was interesting, they said, but they don’t fancy having to sit with their hands folded together on the desk, or standing whenever they addressed the teacher.
“It was fun for one day, but it would get boring,” said Kristina Stefanopoulos.
“Also,” she said, speaking much more like a child of 1998 than one of 1862, “they like, kind of yell at you.”
