​​

School was traditionally 7-8 months long due to boys helping with harvesting until around 1911 when it became 9 months long. Early on the “three R’s” of reading, writing, and arithmetic were stressed. Later curriculums also included geography or basic history. Grammar, penmanship, physiology (health), agriculture (due to its heavy influence on northwest Missouri), civil government, art, and singing (music) were also taught. Some advanced schools offered chemistry, biology, physics, and home economics. There were no work books used until the introduction of blackboards, dictionaries, and maps around the early 1900s. Recitation of the textbook page by page was the common teaching method. Most schools went from the 1st to the 8th grade and before the school districts were consolidated in the 1950s, it often cost money to go to high school and was further away. Before the 1911 reorganization of school districts, where taxes from the township supported the school, many schools were private as townships could not levy taxes.

 

Sometimes discipline was used where students would have privileges revoked but it could be really awkward as some of the older boys tended to be older than their young female teacher.  Games played include: Handy Over, Tag, sled riding, baseball, Fox and Geese, running, Drop the Handkerchief, Mumble Peg, and Cowboy and Indian. Many schools in Nodaway County taught the same subjects to their students. Schools in Nodaway County, as well as in other areas of the United States, taught students different subject levels at different ages, but not always in order. Because of the way the curriculum was put together, students did not always take the same types of courses every year, and would alternate between subjects. For example, a student may learn arithmetic, then skip that subject for a year and take it again another year. To see or take a sample eighth grade examination for Hickory Grove Schoolhouse, click here or go to the resources page.