GERMANS IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS

In the 185Os, Henry Villard found a job as a schoolteacher in a Pennsylvania German community called Jonestown.

I duly entered upon my duties at the appointed time. Only 35 pupils out of 60 reported, and the attendance was always meager, never exceeding 40, and sinking in bad weather often below 30. The ages of my pupils ranged from eighteen to five, the majority being perhaps twelve, with the sexes about equally divided. Most of them were healthy and comely, but shabbily dressed and anything but cleanly in appearance. The majority of them were evidently intelligent, but the examination with which I began my teaching ... proved that they had received very irregular and limited teaching. Their spelling was very defective, their writing awkward, and their pronunciation of English very incorrect....
The general ignorance of my flock was amazing, and I seemed to be among veritable German peasant children. They saw very little of the outside world, and I readily attached them to me by reading and talking to them of it. Though they were the offspring of families that had been settled in Pennsylvania for generations, only a few of them could converse [in] or understand English, so I spoke German to them. At first they found it difficult to understand me, accustomed as they were to the dialect [spoken locally]. This very fact made them look upon the "schoolmaster," as they all called me, with awe, as a sort of superior being.

Herbert Heinen taught for nearly 40 years in the school in Comfort, Texas, in the Hill Country where many German immigrants settled. Heinen recalled his own school years in the same community during the 1880s.

At that time the Comfort School was on the block now known as the park. The grounds were equipped with a gymnastics pole- Turnstange - a double bar and a long smooth ladder which were used for gymnastic purposes. A regular period of instruction in these gymnastics was set aside every Friday afternoon. The girls, of course, did not perform, but I recall at one time they were given instruction in marching and drills.
The old school bell was in a steeple tower on the roof. Two ropes hung down to be used by the teacher only for ringing that old school bell-20 or 30 peals before opening school and again at the close of classes.
Each teacher took care of two grades: the first and second in one room, the third and fourth in the other. There were no written tests, but a good deal of written work was done and preserved, with corrections, in copy books. One half of the lessons were supposed to be in English, the other half in German. Since German was ... spoken on the school grounds and in the homes, it is understandable that very little English was learned.

Ernest L. Meyer recalled going with two friends to a gymnasium in Milwaukee in the early 20th century.

On Saturday morning I call for Hugo and Willie and we walk to the gymnasium at the West SideTurnerhall. Most boys of the neighborhood go to West Side or Bahnfrei, not because they are particularly athletic but because they are commanded to go. Our parents have made a kind of religion out of gymnastics, though we consider the thing rather boring....
But we would not dare cross our parents in anything; so we walk to the Turnerhall and on the way stop at the pretzel bakery. We ask for broken pretzels, and for a penny get a big sackful....
At the gym we put on gray shorts and blouses and gym shoes. There are about thirty boys in our class, and we are lucky to have Papa Brosious as a teacher. Papa Brosious is an institution, venerable and upright as an old cathedral. He must be sixty, and it looks as if he'll go on forever. He has snow- white hair, ruddy cheeks, and blue eyes, always happy. He is a bit corpulent, but straight as a pine and agile as a stripling. He puts us all to shame with his nimbleness on the trapeze, the bars, and the bucks. We love Papa Brosious, even though he works us hard. For when we falter he says nothing bitter; he merely stands before the class, performing the exercise vigorously, correctly, and out of sheer humility we fling ourselves into our work. We sweat, we heave, we stumble, and always this amazing old man flits in front of us, smiling and inexhaustible.

 

Resource: The German American Family Album by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler. Oxford Press, New York. 1995