Reprint: 1986 Pennsylvania; 1993 in Kutztown Historical Society newsletter; 2012 in Berks County TV web site.
The one-room schoolhouse disappeared from the public education scene in rural Pennsylvania, with huge consolidations of bigger schools in the 1950s and 1960s.
To those of us who actually attended one-room schools (mostly children who lived in the country), the little red schoolhouse still gives us a chance to recapture the precious smells, sights, and sounds of our childhood.
Of course, many of these one-room schools that once dotted the townships in Pennsylvania have been converted to chic country dwellings; others are abandoned and rundown; still others have disappeared entirely.
Thanks to individuals and organizations that have a passion for preserving these schools from our past, some have been restored, and some are open to the public as living museums.
Not all schools were red in color. In the earliest colonial days, the first schoolhouses were four-square log buildings, with spaces between the logs filled with dirt, clay, or stone. After the Revolutionary War, new types of schools were built, reflecting the cultural preferences at that time. The English-speaking people built octagonal buildings with three-foot-thick walls, which were plastered inside and white-washed. The Germans constructed four-square brick structures similar to those in their native land.
I attended one of those one-room red brick schools at Eagle Point, near Kutztown, through the 1950s. William and Dorothy Fox purchased this school at public auction in November 1996. According to Kathy Kemp, the Fox’s daughter, “The previous owner, lived there without the modern conveniences of electric and water. He heated the schoolhouse with an indoor coal/wood stove and every inside surface of the structure was blackened by soot. The Fox’s spent the first months cleaning the walls, floors, windows and ceiling. Electric was installed and period schoolhouse lights were hung. The wainscoting, walls and ceiling were painted along with the outside shutters. With a desire to preserve as much as possible of the original furnishings, the blackboards remain along with the original cloth window shades. The varnished library areas is intact. The furnace in the basement, a first in local schools, still sits in its original position. A new shingled roof replaced the deteriorating slate roof.
The bell tower was stabilized and the bell can now be rung by visitor. Even the outhouses have been restored. Many of the students who attended classes at the Eagle Point School have visited and some have brought class and teacher photos to share with William and Dorothy. The schoolhouse is a favorite destination for geocachers who are treated to a glimpse of local history which has been restored William and Dorothy.
My memories of Eagle Point are pretty much the same as it would have been in most one-room schools in Pennsylvania. Our teacher was Sadie Kutz (Mrs. John Kutz). To me, Mrs. Kutz was one of a kind. However, as I visited many other one-room schools, I discovered that in many ways her unstinting love of “all my children,” her unswerving insistence on good behavior, and her general dedication to teaching as a way of life was the universal reflection of all those wonderful people who “kept school” in the old days.
There were 30 of us in grades one through eight. I can still hear the clang of the miniature Liberty Bell summoning us to class from its own little white belfry atop the school. We complained, of course, as we dawdled in one by one, but we were never late. Never! Tardiness could earn us much embarrassment in the seat of dishonor, a straight back chair that faced the wall.
The small entrance held our drinking water, “fetched” daily by the children from a nearby hotel which held rich stores of penny candy.
A trip from the security of the schoolhouse to the outside toilets, especially in winter, could be an adventure. Permission for such a trip could be obtained only after one of us flashed the requisite one or two finger code. Of course, we thought we were the only ones who knew that secret code.
I recaptured all of this and more during my visits of the old schools; the chalk dust snowing down from the huge board at the front of the room; the glistening sunlight pouring through the tall windows, and the dark shadows on cloudy days; the flattened peanut butter, apple butter or onion sandwiches in the rusted lunch kettles and brown paper bags; the “100 percent” spelling papers with their red “showoff” stars on the side wall; cardboard sledding down the slopes of our hard packed playground in winter; and the vast cement porch that held such amusements as jacks, jump rope and “pussy in the corner.”
But the most vivid memory for me was Sadie Kutz’s plain wooden desk, adorned in spring with a vase of field-picked daisies, sun-kissed daffodils, and royal bluebells. I imagined gazing past those flowers to her gentile face. Once again I remember how hurt I was the day I learned she had a home and a child of her own. After all, she was in every way our second mother. She belonged here – in her own one-room schoolhouse.
I’m reminded of what Dan Valentine wrote in his American Essays: “A school is never empty. All the great minds of the past live in its classrooms.”
Obituary of Sadie Kutz, Kutztown Patriot
Sadie E. Kutz, 86, widow of John W. Kutz, died January 14, 1988. A graduate of Kutztown Normal School, she was a teacher in the Kutztown Area School District for 28 years until retiring in 1968. She spent most of those years at the Eagle Point School.
18th Century Rules of Conduct in a One-Room Schoolhouse
These rules, adopted in 1798 and still posted in the Edith P. Moore schoolhouse in Lionville in Chester County, reflect the universal standard of behavior in Pennsylvania’s one-room schools.
1st- Mind to have your hands and faces washed and heads combed before you come to school and be careful to be there by the time appointed.
2nd- Come into school quietly and soberly and when there be quiet and still at your proper business and mind the instructions of the teachers. Move not from seat to seat or go out unnecessarily and but one at a time.
3rd-Do not scribble in your own or another’s spelling, reading, writing or ciphering books nor use one another’s pens without leave.
4th-In coming to or going from school behave with decency and sobriety, not differing with or purposely hurting or offending each other. Mock not or insult any person. Neither stop on the road to play nor make a great unbecoming noise.
5th-Tell no untruths or miscall one another or use the corrupt or unscriptural language of you to a single person. Also be careful to call the months and days of the week by their proper names as 1st, 2nd, 3rd and date your books accordingly.
6th-Let none make bargains, sell, swap or exchange on any account at school.
7th-Let there be no quarrels, fighting or challenging to fight, no wrestling or willfully provoking one another in or out of school or throwing dirt, sticks, stones or snowballs.
Carole Christman Koch grew up in Berks County and has been published in numerous publications. She has a passion for writing and has many stories from growing up on a farm to raising children to humorous stories about her and her husband to everyday stories to season stories and more.
