Every day I drive past the Gothic two-storey brick building where I received my early schooling. It stands, sturdy and uncompromising, on the last windy drumlin on the highway going into town, a monument to the straight row and fact-based system of education we threw out the window 40 years ago. SS #12 was decommissioned in 1968 and now serves as headquarters of the Canadian Colonic Irrigation Society, whatever that is.
The Hillhurst County school board still endures regular chirps from critics who want the kids back in that red schoolhouse, where they claim discipline was strict but fair and we learned useful things like reading and writing. Fortunately for me, my mother taught me to read and write before I went anywhere near a school. Important life skills, she felt, should never be left to public education.
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Mrs. Burns arrived at the school the same year I did; she at the end of her career and I at the beginning. She was short and square and wore Coke-bottle-bottom glasses and a flat helmet of steel grey hair. She had ambitions to be a disciplinarian but she was so near-sighted that justice often descended on innocent parties who came between her and the real offenders. We dreaded fine spring days when she would come out to umpire our one-up baseball games.
She was always telling us to “Play the man!” which was a reference to a favourite short story that she loved to read aloud about a quarterback sidelined permanently by a rough tackle. He limped back to his team from the hospital to serve it as a humble water boy for the rest of the season. He served faithfully and selflessly and tried to be the best water boy he could be. Tears streamed down Mrs. Burns face as she read how, when the team finally won the championship, the players hoisted their water boy on their shoulders and carried him off the field to his proud father in the bleachers. And his father wept too, and told his son that he had “Always played the man.”
Then she would mop her face and proceed to maul the English language, history and social sciences with her grammar lessons. I remember her asking us to parse the following sentence: “The British Empire is composed of all the people in the world who speak English and they all get along real peaceable.” I was a voracious reader, but she was suspicious of any kid who claimed to read more than one book at a time. She wouldn’t let me take out more than one book a week. But she had another crazy rule that you could spend as much time as you wanted at the library shelf selecting that book. This might explain why I still often read while standing.
My experience of organized sports at SS #12 was never as inspiring as one of Mrs. Burns’s stories. I remember during one game against a visiting team of really tough kids from the Pluto Marsh, I managed to hit a solid line drive between first and second and was making good time around the bases when someone on the sidelines threw a half brick that bounced off my head and sent me staggering out into left field. I passed out and my senseless form was dutifully tagged by the outfielder. Mrs. Burns, who could barely make out the pitcher, declared me “out” and a couple of girls dragged me to the sidelines where I came to and promptly threw up. My mother came to pick me up and drove me straight to Sick Children’s Hospital to be treated for concussion. I never went near any form of organized sports again in my life.
The fistfights and bullying I witnessed over those years at SS #12 sharpened my natural instinct to entertain. I learned early on that if people were laughing they were much less likely to punch your lights out. Apart from that, I absorbed almost nothing useful at that school.
Today my kids may not learn anything but recycling, endangered species and a list of rules that don’t apply anywhere outside the building. But I still feel they are blessed compared to anyone forced to attend the little red schoolhouse of my childhood.
Dan Needles is the author of “Wingfield Farm” stage plays. His column is a regular feature in
Country Guide.
