Saturday, Jul. 02, 2005 - 1:13 p.m.

A million years ago--me pic

Education in the �40�s

Sometimes my own education in the late 1940�s and �50�s seems as if it happened on another planet. Life was simple for a child then, or so it seems to me looking back. In southern Washington, all class and socioeconomic lines were blurred, at least for those of us on the right side of the tracks. This soon after the war, every child dressed much like the rest, ate like the rest, and had already lived through the great equalizer of war coupons. Now, quantity of clothing was probably the only difference. Even the city we lived near had a rural tinge with vegetable gardens in most yards and easy access to produce.

Money wasn�t very plentiful for any of us, but that didn�t affect a child much. You went to school, did what the teachers said and came home to entertain yourself with what toys you had. I spent a lot of time creating my playthings or building towns in the dirt of whatever yard in which I lived. Your parents and teachers taught you to do what was right and to try hard, and all parties were usually in agreement.

There were few social and educational programs on my side of the track. Self-sufficiency at whatever economic level was the way of life. Community recreation services were available, and schools encouraged participation with them in the summer, but transportation and small fees sometimes hindered that participation. Public libraries were just starting bookmobile programs to all parts of the counties, and children made great use of them.

Unfortunately, there was another part of town with another school and life style, and I can remember just enough to think life may have been very different for children there. The railroad underpass was the entrance to the East side of Pasco, where the black community lived along with a scattering of white folk fallen on very hard times and who were regrouping. We heard the news of knifings that regularly occurred and when our parents had to travel through the area to reach other downriver portions of the county, the car didn�t stop until that side of town was left far behind. For a few months in my third grade year before our new school was completed, we were bused to the huge three-story brick schoolhouse on the east side of town. It rose sternly in the middle of a rocky dirt playground surrounded by towering old locust trees and we entered our classrooms by climbing wide stairs with long slick banisters. We transported ones crept quietly around, looking at the strange faces, but all our teachers were kind and classroom conduct and attitudes were just like our own schools.

Is our present integrated world better? Perhaps, but along with the change came acceptance of every behavior, introduction and growth of negative values in many areas, and serious segregation in our own halls, where each group gravitated in its own special orbit determined by ethnic or economic rules only dimly understood in previous years. Unable to solve many of the new problems arising every year, most teachers in my high school years had quietly abandoned the moral and value issues of teaching, and just did their best to work through the difficult task of teaching skills to an ever-changing conglomerate united by nothing.
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This image also seems a million years ago, but was only 25 or so years ago. We lived at the old place five miles east of here, and 1s and his extension team had stopped on tour. We housed as many as we could, and fed them all on their last day. That is what is happening here. From my attire, it was probably Sunday afternoon before they left for another service miles down the road. We hadn't seen 1s since Christmas, and it was June. He brought a picture dictionary for 2d's 4th birthday, and the team wrote cute little saying in appropriate letter spots. She took the dictionary to her own home just a few weeks ago.

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