Academic literature on the topic 'Middle schooling teachers'

Alively, Towheaded, Eight-Year-Old Boy shivered with dread and excitement on a cool morning in September 1900 in Ottertail County, Minnesota, as he headed for his first day of school. His older brother, Mads, and his older sister, Esther, had already attempted this venture, and neither had liked it at all. For many, not only the first day of school but latter days as well were a harrowing experience. Subsequently his six younger brothers and sisters would make the same journey, and most of them would not like it either. His father offered one piece of advice in Danish, the only language spoken in the family, “When the teacher looks at you, stand up and say, ‘My name is Victor Lincoln Albjerg.’” That was his preparation for schooling in America. His parents’ concession to his need for Americanization was his middle name; they offered few others. Victor Lincoln Albjerg was my father. Little Victor followed his father’s advice precisely, and when the teacher turned to him, he rose and replied as his father had instructed. Derisive laughter from his fellow students and a frown from the teacher greeted him. Confused and embarrassed, he sat immediately, and understood why Mads and Esther had sought to avoid school. Obviously the teacher had asked him something other than his name, but, since she spoke English and he spoke only Danish, he had no idea what she had said. The teacher, on the other hand, recognized that her preeminent task was to teach her pupils English, and to do so she forbade them from speaking their family language to each other in the school or schoolyard. The sharp rap of the birch rod met such infractions. Despite his inauspicious beginning, Victor prospered in the school, more than his father wished. Victor’s father believed in schooling only within “thrifty limits,” by which he meant a modicum of English and arithmetic and perhaps a bit else but not enough to give students an appetite for further book learning that might take them away from their local environment. As his father feared, Victor, unlike his brothers, did not want to return to the family farm. As he expressed it, “I wanted to be somebody—a rural schoolteacher.”