The Joys of School

With summer in full swing I think this is the perfect time to talk about school. Most of us probably did not like school as much as we should have, nor did we appreciate it for all it could be. School prepares you for life, for everyday communications and interactions, for challenges that come your way. In school it is the teachers who shape students’ lives and it is the teachers who definitely do not get enough thanks for all their hard work. School also provides a great opportunity to experience things you wouldn’t normally be exposed to through texts, activities, and trips to the Museum! But how far have our educational institutions come since the settling of Southeastern New Mexico? In her book, Life on the Prairies: Settling the Llano Estacado, Thelma Linam devotes a chapter to “School in the Early Days,” which is what I’m going to focus on in this month’s article.

In the late 1800’s the school at Monument, NM was a one room school house where the students’ desks were homemade, the teacher’s desk was homemade, and the men of the town would take turns bringing wood to the school in the winter. Running water was available only when it rained, so Thelma wrote. Children went to school from age 6 and up and one teacher would teach all of the children of differing ages and skill levels in one room. According to Thelma, in 1917 when Lea County was formed there were 36 school districts. Today, Lea County has 5 school districts with at least 41 schools in the districts combined. It seems that maybe school districts in 1917 coincided to the individual schools, most of which were one room school houses like the one discussed above. School houses were not always close to where people lived. When Thelma turned 6 her family moved to their place under the Caprock and the closest school was in Lovington, some 27 miles away, and during a time when many people were walking or riding a horse to school with no school bus, this was a far trek. Therefore, some ranchers hired someone like a governess to teach their children at home, or sometimes the children would stay with friends and family who lived closer to a school. Thelma’s daughters, Bruce Alene and Alta Faye, were homeschooled until Hobbs had its own school system. Their father, Virgil, wanted them to attend school so much that he bought a pickup and took many of the ranch children to school establishing a rural bus system for the area (this information came from the 2009 Induction Program of Alta Faye Linam Klein into the Lea County Cowboy Hall of Fame). Many times the school house served as more than just an educational facility: it was also a church and community center for the families in the areas. From this you can see that not only were the schools important as an educational facility, but they also served as a social hot-spot for the community.

Schools today remain a hub for community activities. As adults, I hope that we can all look back on our school years if not with fondness at least with a better appreciation knowing what our parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents went through possibly with one room school houses, what luxuries we really did/do have, what our teachers did for us, and what an education did/does for us no matter what level you complete. Since school will be starting next month, I am going to once again talk about school in the early years but I will focus on one of the artifacts in the Virgil and Thelma Linam Collection. Again, most of the information in this article came from Thelma Linam’s book, Life on the Prairies: Settling the Llano Estacado. To learn more about early schools in the area stop on by the Western Heritage Museum Complex and Lea County Cowboy Hall of Fame and check out the information on schools in the South Gallery.