TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/020491/0204120.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.3 KB | 115 lines

                                                                                EDUCATION, Page 64

Little Schoolhouse on the Prairie


In Montana the old, one-room ways are still good ways

By SAM ALLIS/JORDAN


    Imagine a public school where discipline is no problem. The
kids work by themselves, help one another with problems and
have a strong sense of community. There are no drugs, violence
or bad language. Can such an institution exist in today's
America?

    It can, and it goes by the name of the Pine Grove Elementary
School, a stark clapboard affair the size of a mobile home,
some 40 miles of gravel road from Jordan, a hiccup of a town
on the plains of eastern Montana. Pine Grove is one of 640
one-room public schoolhouses left in the U.S., a good example
of a vanishing breed that occupies a hallowed place in American
mythology. And the formula still works. Montana alone has more
than 100 one-room schools in operation, and the state ranks
third nationally in achievement tests.

    But appearances are deceiving. The country school is no
educational idyll, but the centerpiece of a complicated social
arrangement and a daunting challenge for a lone teacher, who
may have to juggle pupils in as many as nine grades with
creativity and coherence. At Pine Grove, which has a total of
nine students in eight grades, first-grader Becky Stanton
meanders through a paragraph about American Indians while
sixth-grader Nicole Phipps, sitting inches away, considers the
difference between a kilometer and a hectometer. Their teacher,
Elaine Savage, moves smoothly from one girl to the other.
"They're growing corn and beans," Savage explains to Becky.
And, in the next breath, to Nicole: "Move the decimal point
over one place."

    Beyond the kidney-shaped table that serves as Savage's
cockpit in the 20-ft. by 60-ft. classroom, Cal Phipps, Nicole's
eighth-grade cousin, reads about peristalsis for science. His
younger brother Chad and fellow fourth-grader Chan Childers
pursue phonics at their desks. Chan's second-grade sister Nolan
wrestles solo with a spelling exercise, and Renee Stanton,
Becky's seventh-grade sister, is engrossed in the Civil War for
social studies.

    The isolation of the one-room school leaves many students
starved for greater contact with peers and more extracurricular
activities. "I was bored out there," says Wendy Stanton, 15,
who attended Pine Grove and now boards in Jordan as a high
school freshman. "You miss your friends."

    The curriculum at Pine Grove is as spare as the decor. There
are no foreign-language classes or organized sports, virtually
no music or art. Current events receive minimal classroom
attention. Savage is the first to concede that she has not yet
figured out how to operate the Apple computer that Ronnie
Stanton, Wendy's father, donated to the school a few years
back. But no matter. "We want the basics, and it's working,"
says Stanton. "Our kids come out of the country school into the
town high school way advanced. It's the one-on-one attention."
This can cut both ways. Walter Lockie says he flunked math in
his early high school years because his rural teacher for eight
years was weak in that subject.

    Teacher Savage, 64, often works seven days a week and sends
home all missed math questions and spelling errors for parental
inspection. Each weekend she prepares sheets for every child
detailing the workbook pages to be completed on a daily basis
for the next week. Because she must rely heavily on these
telephone directory-size texts full of student exercises, she
loses in spontaneity what she gains in regularity. But, she
says flatly, "there is no other way I could do this job."

    Are these kids living in a rustic time warp? Yes. Not far
away from the Pine Grove schoolhouse sit two wooden outhouses
and the old pickup Cal Phipps drives to school. He is only 13,
but there is no school-bus service. Jordan -- nearby by Montana
standards -- is the seat of Garfield County, 4,500 sq. mi.,
where the cattle outnumber the 1,600 humans and the flatlands
are ribboned with cliffs called the Missouri Breaks. No one
from Pine Grove in recent memory has ventured so far as Chicago
for college, and Los Angeles might as well be Pluto.

    Do the Pine Grove students know about Saddam Hussein, Milli
Vanilli and crack? Not much. Do they care? No. "There's no
great interest around here in going to New York City," says Don
McDonald, 15, a sophomore at Garfield County High School in
Jordan. Many graduates major in agriculture at two-year
colleges around the Big Sky State and then return to family
ranches if they have them. Otherwise they must look for work
elsewhere.

    The turnover among rural teachers is high. Pine Grove went
through four in 1978 alone, including one man who was bothered
by the presence of mice. The educators must endure Montana's
brutal winters in isolation, usually in tiny quarters attached
to their schoolhouses. Nor is there much excitement in town
except the Hell Creek Bar. Salaries are low. Savage, a widowed
22-year veteran of six rural Montana schools, makes $14,000
annually after six years at Pine Grove. "You've got to love
what you're doing," she says. Then she rings her brass school
bell out the front door and tells Chad to raise the flag. It
is time for school.