Eight Grades, One RoomOne-Room School

ONE-ROOM SCHOOL
by Marjorie Distelhorst Kerr

The six-year-old Iowa farm girl was primed to start school in 1939. She was shy and apprehensive. Will she learn to read, to spell, to do arithmetic? Her favorite pastimes were riding her horse and drawing horses. I, Marjorie Distelhorst, was that girl.


The South Jackson one-room school housed eight grades, all together in the one room! The school was in the district of Des Moines County Rural Schools, Iowa, and I walked about a quarter mile across fields through mud, snow and spring green crops to get there. The white clapboard one-room school building was located on one acre surrounded by fields with barbed wire fencing on three sides. To the east, the entry side faced a gravel road. Sometimes, in good weather, we rode our balloon-tired bicycles to school on that gravel road. In opposite corners at the back of the acre sat two two-seat outhouses. One was for boys and one for girls, and the toilet paper was pages torn from Montgomery Ward or Sears Roebuck catalogs. We softened the sheets of paper by crumpling them in our hands.


In front of the school stood the tall flagpole and a long-handled water pump. Two students were assigned to take the big American flag outside to raise the flag on the tall pole, providing the weather permitted. If it rained, the assigned students rushed out to remove the flag and fold it for storage inside! We pumped the well water to take to the inside basin. Not far from the pump was a step up to a wide cement entry through the single front door, and just inside there were hooks to hang coats and a shelf to place lunch pails. We left our overshoes for mud or snow on the floor under the coats.


The room had three windows on the long North and South sides, with kerosene chimney lamps by each window. The far end of the room was for the teachers big wooden desk, a big round coal burning stove, the big wall-sized blackboard, big pulldown charts, a free-standing flag and a globe of the world. Two framed portraits hung on the side walls. As in so many classrooms, the pictures were of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln! Each morning was started with the children standing to pledge allegiance to the American flag and recite the Lord’s Prayer.

-- Photo of two wood and cast iron desks from the South Jackson one-room school--
One desk has the maker’s name: Smith & McCullough.

Each child had a wooden and cast iron desk and the desks were arranged in rows. Unruly boys would carve initials on the desktops . . .and torment the girls nearby. Each desk had a storage space for books and notebooks. There was only one teacher for all eight grades, and she would have classes take turns going to the front of the room to recite their lessons.


I experienced three different female teachers during the eight years I attended the South Jackson school. They were all expected to stay unmarried while being teachers. The first two of the those teachers boarded at our little house. The third teacher came from another town, and she was younger than the others. She was my favorite; I thought she was more enthusiastic. I learned to read using phonics, learned to spell with many spelling bees, and learned history, astronomy, geography, biology through lessons and books. Best of all was Art on Friday! I could draw horses! Memorable, to me, were flash cards/photos of other places in the USA and the World that reinforced my love of geography. Photos of Orange groves were particularly fascinating to a girl in Iowa. I never dreamt that I would someday live in Orange County, California!


My class had six members within a school that had a total of twelve students, but by the time we got to eighth grade, the total had diminished. My Class members were: Twins, Thelma and Velma Schulz, Donald Schulz, Billy Fichthorn, Leon Wirt, and myself, Marjorie Distelhorst. At recess time we all played games–tag, ball games, and hide-and-seek in the yard and around the wood shed behind the schoolhouse.

We six graduated May 31, 1947. Our graduation from South Jackson, Des Moines County Rural School was held in the auditorium of Burlington High School, Burlington, Iowa, eight miles from South Jackson. Leon Wirt and I graduated with honors. The school closed after our graduation for lack of students.


We received certificates to enter high school, so then we went by school bus to the Huron Consolidated School in Louisa County 15 to 20 miles away. That is another story of Rural Education.

Submitted by Marjorie Kerr
March 31, 2021

Marjorie Kerr’s Brief Bio
My lifelong passions have been art, travel, and family celebrations. I earned a BA degree in drawing and painting from CSUF, and I have pursued them all my life. My other work was mostly in offices, including ten years at the Fullerton Public Library. Travels took me to most of Europe, to Greece, Turkey, Japan, Peru, and the USA. My son and family moved to Oregon not long ago, so that is my next trip. I will be accompanied by my daughter.