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CHAPTER 7

Education There was a greater difference between Berlin's school and Brunswick's three impressive learning institutions than between the woodcutter's cabin and the prince's palace. The difference between "then" and "now" was more than physical. Then, students walked to school. Students who could not walk to school rode horses or drove buggies to high school. Students from Knoxville commuted by train. Until fairly modern times, Washington County paid tuition for their high school youngsters, who also used the trains until they were later bussed to Brunswick High. Now buses transport all those living beyond walking distance. Standardized testing has developed into an allschool affair, with results determining placement in classes, who receives remedial work or scholarships, and which college one goes to. Classes have decreased in size from SO-student, one-room schools to classes held by law to 25 or 30 students each. Then, one teacher was responsible for as many as seven grade levels of teaching all basic subjects; now special subjects, such as art, physical education, and music are expected even at elementary level. A great deal of memorizing of poetry and other items has decreased in deference to reasoning and problem-solving. Elementary children are now exposed to a week of outdoor camping experience at the sixth grade level. New schools are constructed with air conditioning and central heating, where pot-belly stoves were once the only concession to climate control. Where each classroom was fortunate to have a shelf of assorted books, today every school in Frederick County has a library and a librarian. No one has to carry a cold lunch today, as all schools either have cafeterias or have food satellited to them. The forties saw room mothers organized with specialized responsibilities as they volunteered their services on a regular basis. The sixties saw them offering important services in the classroom, or apart with small groups of children. Teacher aides

have been hired the past two decades, and volunteers are still present to assist the classroom teacher. Today, with about half of the mothers of school-age children in the work force, there is less dependence on great numbers of them on a scheduled basis. The early requirements of seven years elementary school and four years of high school changed in 1949, and one year was added. Grades seven, eight, and nine were Junior High, and ten, eleven, and twelve were Senior, although credits for high school were counted from the ninth grade through twelfth, still four years.Subjects taught at the earlier school were enhanced, improved, enriched and frequently changed. Busses became availalble for inter-school athletics and for field trips. Opening exercises started school with a Bible reading, prayer, and Pledge to the Flag; today the law of the country prohibits prayer and religious teaching in school. Then, if a child lived EAST of Maple Avenue, he went to East Brunswick School; if he or she lived WEST of Maple Avenue, he or she went to West Brunswick School. Overcrowding sometimes brought exceptions to this rule. The severe discipline of yesteryear moderated by mid-century, but today teachers lament the lack of support of many families in the matter of discipline; and the public went through a period of not wantingvaluestaught-acomplaintthatiscausing second thoughts today. A century and a half has intervened between some of the foregoing "thens" and nows;" many factors have been at work in framing the setting for what has developed: officials, builders, parents, economics, industry. Every reader of this chapter will find a slot where he can identify, if only for a fleeting moment. W-MMM

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