Categories: ArtEducationPoetryRattleBag and Rhubarb

Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School

The Dot One-Room Schoolhouse by Madge Bloom

Not a very effective way to get children to love school and enjoy math. But looks like it was an excellent method for teaching subversion, resilience and resistance to authority. Good work Miss Moran.

Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School

by Jane Kenyon

The others bent their heads and started in.

Confused, I asked my neighbor

to explain—a sturdy, bright-cheeked girl

who brought raw milk to school from her family’s

herd of Holsteins. Ann had a blue bookmark,

and on it Christ revealed his beating heart,

holding the flesh back with His wounded hand.

Ann understood division. . . .

Miss Moran sprang from her monumental desk

and led me roughly through the class

without a word. My shame was radical

as she propelled me past the cloakroom

to the furnace closet, where only the boys

were put, only the older ones at that.

The door swung briskly shut.

The warmth, the gloom, the smell

of sweeping compound clinging to the broom

soothed me. I found a bucket, turned it

upside down, and sat, hugging my knees.

I hummed a theme from Haydn that I knew

from my piano lessons. . . .

and hardened my heart against authority.

And then I heard her steps, her fingers

on the latch. She led me, blinking

and changed, back to the class.

Jane Kenyon, “Trouble with Math in a One-Room Country School” from Collected Poems.

Manuel Domínguez “Niña en la Pizarra 1995

Edward Bawden, Life in an English Village 1949

A benign illustration for a not so benign poem – here’s an illustration from Edward Bawden (1903–1989). He drew these lithographs of his home village of Great Bardfield in Essex. Life in an English Village was published by King Penguin Books, in 1949.

Featured photograph: The Dot One-Room Schoolhouse by Madge Bloom

Josie Holford