This film is really about two subjects rolled into one short. One is how the one room schoolhouse, once so ubiquitious across America, was becoming a thing of the past by the post War era as highways began to join all parts of the country and the returning GIs and their families chose to settle in suburban tract houses near cities where jobs were plentiful.
John Nesbitt narrated and wrote this short, so who knows if it is precisely his experience or not, although the outfits of the children and the schoolteacher make it look a bit before his time. Mr. Nesbitt was actually born in 1910 and these outfits look like it IS 1910.
Besides nostalgia for the intimacy of the small group educated in the one room school house - the plaque on the door says it was founded in 1902 - there is nostalgia for the school's teacher - Miss Turlock. Nesbitt talks about how she was firm, how she seemed to have eyes in the back of her head and nothing got past her, but how she tempered justice with compassion, even being understanding with rule breakers if she thought they had learned their lesson, and particularly gentle with the kid who was a bit slow in the classroom.
The finale shows the school closing in 1940, and since it was only open for 38 years, it is likely Miss Turlock was its only teacher. As a result, all of her students pile into the single room school to say goodbye to her on her final day, their very presence probably meaning so much to her.
The final scene shows the aged Miss Turlock, taking a final look at where she has spent the last 40 years of her life, and the short says "maybe this homely spinster was not so childless and alone after all." I mean - Yikes!. Harsh words, but true for the time. The people who taught school prior to 1970 were largely single educated women since other professions that they might have chosen were closed to them.
I'd recommend this as an interesting if somewhat sentimental look at a bygone institution.
John Nesbitt narrated and wrote this short, so who knows if it is precisely his experience or not, although the outfits of the children and the schoolteacher make it look a bit before his time. Mr. Nesbitt was actually born in 1910 and these outfits look like it IS 1910.
Besides nostalgia for the intimacy of the small group educated in the one room school house - the plaque on the door says it was founded in 1902 - there is nostalgia for the school's teacher - Miss Turlock. Nesbitt talks about how she was firm, how she seemed to have eyes in the back of her head and nothing got past her, but how she tempered justice with compassion, even being understanding with rule breakers if she thought they had learned their lesson, and particularly gentle with the kid who was a bit slow in the classroom.
The finale shows the school closing in 1940, and since it was only open for 38 years, it is likely Miss Turlock was its only teacher. As a result, all of her students pile into the single room school to say goodbye to her on her final day, their very presence probably meaning so much to her.
The final scene shows the aged Miss Turlock, taking a final look at where she has spent the last 40 years of her life, and the short says "maybe this homely spinster was not so childless and alone after all." I mean - Yikes!. Harsh words, but true for the time. The people who taught school prior to 1970 were largely single educated women since other professions that they might have chosen were closed to them.
I'd recommend this as an interesting if somewhat sentimental look at a bygone institution.