THE EDUCATION OF A PRAIRIE BOY

     I was a small child in the 40's and grew up in the 50's. These are dates you have to remember. I think only one of my follower was running around before me.

     I grew upon the prairies of Western Canada. In one of my last posts I told you that I was born at Esk, Saskatchewan Canada. Because of the wide open spaces the main part of the education system was the one room country school. School areas were set up so that kids rarely had more than 3 miles to go to school. Transportation was mostly walking and sometimes by horse. I was lucky. Our farm was one mile away from the school.

     However , education does not only consist of formal classroom activities. We learn many things when we are away from school. A young prairie boy could find many things around him that taught him things.

    So here goes for my education before entering  a formal education system. I was fortunate enough to have a younger brother who was less than  year younger than me. That seemed to accelerate the learning. 

    We lived on a small farm that was still suffering from the effects of the depression. As a result there was quite a selection of very old machinery. So as little boys we clambered over every piece of machinery in the yard. We tried every lever on every machine. We climbed everything we could climb trees, haystacks, straw stacks wood piles, barn structure and tried to climb many of the old wooden telephone poles.

    One activity was to whack everything we could with a hammer and see what sound it made and how strong it was. One time we whacked a spark plug on an engine and were greatly dismayed when the spark plug broke. We knew we were in trouble but we didn't tell Dad preferring to wait as long as possible for the punishment. 

     There were many other children in the other area to play with. Kids learn from each other.

     Our house was small so most of the time were played outside. We wandered through fields and brushy and treed areas. I remember seeing a yellow warbler for the first time as I was crawling on my hands and knees through the willows. There were many birds in the yard and nearby area,

     There were many animals on the farm. 

    Mom read  to us almost every night. The four of us would get in bed to listen to Mom read. I remember the Thornton Burgess books. She read them over and over. There was also a religious set of books called the Sugar Creek Gang. 

     Each day started with reading a portion from the bible and prayer. In the winter this ritual was added after supper (the evening meal).

     And then of course there was Sunday school. We listened to bible stories and memorized numerous bible passages. I memorized the 23rd Psalm and probably 23 more Psalms. I don't think I memorized the one with 119 verses. Now in Sunday School we were told that some activities were sin. Since something was sin like smoking we had to try it as soon as possible.

     As a  preschool kid there were many useful and interesting things to learn . Next I'll try school bust I will continue to learn things out of the school setting.