Saturday, November 15, 2003

School days

Arriving on trucks, huddling near wood stoves, getting educated was sometimes a challenge in early Valencia County

(This month's edition of La Historia del Rio Abajo is taken from Chapter 5 of Maggie McDonald and Richard Melzer's popular book, Valencia County: History Through the Photographer's Lens. Other chapters in the book tell the history of additional topics in Valencia County history, including sports, religion, business, architecture and transportation.

Drs. McDonald and Melzer will sign copies of their book at Hastings in Los Lunas from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 16.

Click to enlarge

Holiday discounts on the purchase of multiple copies of the book will be offered. All proceeds from the sale of the book go to the Valencia County Historical Society.

Dr. Melzer's newest book, on the history of childhood in New Mexico, will also be available for sale and signing. The book is entitled When We Where Young in the West.)

Education has long been valued in Valencia County. Local residents have known the importance of education for their children's futures and their community's well-being.

But educational opportunities in Valen-cia County and all of New Mexico were scattered and inconsistent until well into the 20th century. Few communities in Va-lencia County had the resources to build, much less maintain and operate, good public or private schools in the early years.

Early efforts

It is not surprising that, with its long tradition of strong spiritual values, religious leaders of the 19th century opened the first schools in Valencia County.

Harriett Shaw, the wife of an early Baptist missionary, attempted to teach three local Hispanic girls in Peralta as early as 1852. Shaw tried her best but soon wrote to her mother that she was "nearly worn out with the charge of these wild girls." Shaw's small school closed just four months after it had opened its doors.

Methodist missionaries made later, more successful attempts to bring education to the Peralta community, largely due to the relative success of the Methodist Church in that area. By 1884, the Methodist school enjoyed an enrollment of 30 students. In 1898, the school still had 28 students but closed for unknown reasons by the end of the century.

As the first nuns in Valencia County, the Sisters of Mercy created a Catholic school in Belen in 1888. But, like so many early institutions of its kind, lack of funding caused the nuns to abandon their efforts after only two terms.

The First Lutheran Church opened a small school in 1894 to teach the sons and daughters of the growing, education-minded German population in the Belen community. Classes were held in the small Lutheran church until a larger, more impressive church was built on Reinken Road in 1911.

Other small schools opened and closed in the late 19th century. Most were tied to the skills and availability of individual teachers who taught in their homes or in the homes of their students. Funding came from tuition alone, a most unreliable source in most poor communities.

Public school taxes were unheard of, especially when some Hispanic residents feared that public education might compromise their traditional values and culture. Sharing values and culture with the next generation had always been the responsibility of the family and church. This right and responsibility was only transferred to mostly Anglo teachers and mostly Anglo-dominated schools with considerable trepidation.

Father Jean Baptiste Ralliere, the long-serving French priest of Tomé, experienced far greater success in the Catholic school he created for both boys and girls by the 1860s. Among the many subjects taught, Father Ralliere stressed religion, history, English, math, agriculture and carpentry.

In fact, with its inclusion of practical subjects like agriculture and carpentry, Father Ralliere's must be considered the first vocational institution in the county and, perhaps, the Rio Abajo.

Always interested in teaching patriotism and history, Father Ralliere reportedly led his students to the top of Tomé Hill to witness the Battle of Peralta, or at least the smoke of battle, during the Confederate invasion of New Mexico in April 1862.

The esteemed priest was so successful in Tomé that Valencia County leaders asked him to serve as the county's first superintendent of schools in 1887. Assuming this new responsibility with his usual energy, Father Ralliere visited each school in the county and began to make plans to improve and expand them all.

Unfortunately, Valencia County lacked the resources to run its schools as they existed, much less as envisioned by Father Ralliere. It had no funds to finance improvements, no matter how beneficial they might be for county students. After just months in office, Father Ralliere joined the ranks of frustrated educators and resigned his post in January 1888. All schools had closed by later that year for lack of funding.

Felipe Chaves, one of the wealthiest men in all of New Mex-ico, attempted to help fill the county's educational void by establishing the nonsectarian Felipe Chaves Academy for Girls on South Main Street in Belen in 1900.

Chaves went so far as to include ongoing funding for the operation of his academy in his will when he died in 1905. A $20,000 trust was created to pay for teacher salaries and the upkeep of the school building.

Chaves's will even included instructions that his school was to be whitewashed twice a year. Serving between 80 and 100 students a year, the academy remained open until 1914.

Other wealthy residents of Valencia County had their own solutions to the problem of education for at least their own children. Like many affluent families, the Lunas of Los Lunas hired private tutors to teach their young in their early years.

When old enough, affluent young men like Maximiliano Luna were sent east to private schools and universities, often affiliated with the Catholic Church. Luna, and others like him, returned to Valencia County well versed in not only English but also Anglo culture and business ways.

Beginnings of change

Conditions gradually improved in Valencia County schools with the passage of the territorial Public School Bill in 1892. In 1907, a building originally constructed to house a territorial orphanage in Belen, became the Central Grade School on Reinken Road in Belen. Other public grade schools were opened throughout the county, including adobe structures in Peralta (1911) and the East Side School in Belen (1921).

Even a county high school was built in Belen in 1916, on land do-nated by Belen merchant and land developer, John Becker. Costing $38,000, the school was long affectionately known as the "red brick" school building. One of its earliest senior classes had five graduates in 1920. Six years later, the school had over 200 students, taught by a faculty of 11 teachers.

But, while handy for students in or near Belen, the county high school was decidedly inconvenient for students living in more distant communities. Students from Peralta, for example, spent most of their out-of-school hours commuting back and forth from home in a truck whose owner had bid for the opportunity to provide this daily transportation.

But funding for such transportation was not always feasible. When only three 12th-grade students from Peralta attended the county high school in 1926, the county's board of education decided that the limited demand for the service did not warrant its cost. The isolated high school students of Peralta were denied public transpiration to school.

Much of this problem with distance was eliminated with the building of a new high school in Los Lunas. Solomon Luna High School, named after the community's most powerful political and economic leader of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, opened its doors in 1926. Its first four graduates received their diplomas from board of education president Joseph F. Tondre two years later. In 1932, the school graduated 17 seniors, a school record at the time.

With the opening of Solomon Luna High School, the old Valencia County institution became Belen High School. A natural, usually good-natured rivalry between the valley's two high schools began almost immediately.

St. Mary's Catholic School in Belen was built and opened, with an enrollment of 290 students, in 1927. The Ursuline sisters taught at St. Mary's until 1932. The Dominican nuns taught and administered the much-loved school from 1934 until the early 1990s, when the staff became predominately lay teachers.

Smaller communities developed their own public grammar schools in Adelino, Bosque, Casa Colorada, El Cerro, Jarales, Los Chavez, Los Lentes, Peralta, Pueblitos, Tomé and Valencia. Several of these schools were built or rebuilt with New Deal government funding during the Great Depression.

All schools were consolidated into either the Los Lunas or the Belen public school districts after 1945.

Early teachers

Early teachers had few requirements to teach. A high school diploma was sufficient, although many teachers taught with far less education or training. College graduates were rare. Summer teacher institutes were regularly held in towns across the state to help compensate for this general lack of formal teacher training.

As in almost every county of New Mexico — and the United States — teachers in Valencia County were usually dedicated to their work and their students far beyond the level of compensation they received for their labor.

In careers spanning 35 years or more, most teachers in the county won their students' respect and affection. Taught by Hispanic, Anglos, and, later, Black teachers, most children felt that they were treated fairly and equally in Valencia County schools.

Early teachers faced many rules regarding not only their performance in their classrooms but also their behavior in their personal lives. In 1921, for example, the county school board established rules that insisted, among other things, that "teachers are forbidden from keeping company at school."

Teachers "also are forbidden to go to dances during the term."

"The drinking of intoxicating liquors of any kind, at any time, by any teacher, is hereby forbidden."

Teachers "must set a good example in the community in which they teach."

Most teachers had little difficulty following such rules, but there were exceptions. In 1926, the school board received disturbing reports that at least some teachers were enjoying the company of young men during school hours and were keeping "late hours," contrary to the established rules.

Alarmed, the board directed its clerk to send copies of all school district rules and regulations to the offending teachers so that these rules could be "positively observed" in the future.

Teachers faced financial challenges in almost every decade. In the earliest years, teachers were routinely paid with I.O.U.s, payable when and if public funding was available.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, declining public revenues meant even fewer resources for schools and their staffs. In 1933, the school board of education announced that, with funds running low, it would regretfully have to close schools before the end of the school year.

Rather than deprive their students of several weeks of school, a group of teachers volunteered to work without pay. As with most teachers, the students and their education came first, despite the economic crisis that plagued the nation.

Women teachers faced other disadvantages in their chosen profession. School records show that they were routinely paid less than their male counterparts. And, as of 1932, a woman could not secure a teaching contract in Valencia County if her spouse or any member of her immediate family already worked for the school district.

To make matters worse, small women could be physically intimidated by their growing male students, although the county school board had officially condoned corporal punishment in the classroom by the early 1920s.

Students' lives

Most graduates of Valencia County schools have fond memories of not only their teachers but also their school lives as a whole.

This does not mean that their school days were without challenges. Transportation, like the problems faced by the high school students of Peralta, was often a problem. Many children had to walk two to three miles to school and back home.

Some students walked so far that, in the winter months, older boys would build fires from tumbleweeds so that younger children could warm their hands and feet and keep going. Father John Castillo, who started his education in Belen in 1920, sometimes rode his spotted mare, La Pinta, to school.

Other children rode in trucks like the one that ran from Peralta to the county high school. Some adults remember when these primitive "buses" got stuck in mud and all the children had to get out to push, leaving them with mud-spattered clothes for the rest of the day.

The vehicle used to transport children in Los Lunas also served as a hearse for local funerals. A horse-drawn wagon was used to bring students from Peralta to the high school in Los Lunas as late as 1928.

At the destination of their journeys, children often studied in equally primitive one-room schoolhouses. All grades were taught in the same small quarters, usually using homemade benches and tables.

Without indoor plumbing, outhouses were the norm at most rural schools. A pump, often located dangerously near the outhouse, provided water for students and teachers alike. Everyone shared the same drinking cup, adding to the health hazards of the day.

A wood-burning stove kept students warm on cold winter days. Teachers often required each student to bring a piece of wood to school to keep the stove going through the day.

The stove was also used to warm lunches of chile, beans and tortillas brought from home in tin cans with handles. A hot lunch program was not begun until early 1949.

Some firewood was used as a means of corporal punishment. If a child misbehaved, teachers were known to put the roughest piece of wood on the floor and make the child kneel on it for up to 10 minutes. At least one child was made to kneel on small pebbles.

More often, mischievous children were hit on their hands with rulers or pointers. Few received sympathy from their parents. In fact, many children dared not tell their parents of punishment at school for fear of receiving additional punishment for disrupting their classrooms and upsetting their teachers.

Other problems involved equipment and supplies. Books and other learning materials were scarce, but teachers and students managed the best they could. Books were shared and used for many years.

Each student was expected to bring a tablet of paper at the start of each school year. Teachers collected all the tablets and distributed paper as needed through the academic year. Paper was seldom wasted.

With better educational opportunities in towns, some parents went so far as to move from distant farms and ranches so their children could benefit from better schools in Los Lunas and Belen.

Most instruction was in English because knowing English was considered important in preparing children for their future lives, especially in the business world. With most Hispanic children knowing only Spanish when they started school, a majority had to spend their first year in "pre-primer" English classes. This requirement made most Hispanic children older than their classmates when they eventually entered the first grade and ultimately when they graduated from grammar school or high school.

From the first grade on, all children had to speak English in school, both in their classrooms and on their playgrounds. Anyone caught speaking Spanish could be punished, usually with a slap with a ruler. Both Anglo and Hispanic teachers enforced this strict rule, believing that their students would ultimately benefit by learning English as well as or instead of Spanish.

Unfortunately, this emphasis on English further isolated Spanish-speaking parents from their children's world, causing strain and dissension in some families. Anglo holidays and customs, from foodways to sports, were taught and practiced, often at the expense of many Hispanic customs and time-honored traditions.

And what was true of Hispanic children was equally true of Indian children at Isleta who attended English-taught, Anglo-dominated schools on the pueblo and at far-off government Indian schools.

School was also difficult for many children because they were often needed at home to help with chores. This was especially true with boys from farm families in need of extra labor at planting or harvesting seasons at the beginning and end of each school year.

Facing these many obstacles, most students finished only a few years of formal education, and it was considered quite an accomplishment to graduate from the eighth grade. Only a fortunate few graduated from high school.

But however many years of school children completed in the early years of education in Valencia County, they normally learned at least three life-long lessons: to respect authority, to value education and to deal well with others.

Having learned these essential lessons, most children grew up to be responsible adults, solid citizens and good future parents in their respective communities in the Rio Abajo.

E-mail this story Printer-friendly version