Forward: Dad often told stories like the one that is included here about the kitchen table math and grammar lessons that he and his siblings received from his Mom. Those stories resonated with me because my Father and Mother continued that practice with my siblings and me during our childhood. Dad also frequently spoke about his Mother’s love of poetry, particularly the poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar. While recently searching through vintage newspapers for articles about Granddad King’s performances as a member of the Fisk Jubilee Quartet I happened across a memorial message that Grandmom King submitted for publication in the Chattanooga Daily Times on June 18, 1963, the twelfth anniversary of her husband’s death. In the memoriam Grandmom demonstrated her love for poetry by quoting a poem and hymn lyric that frequently appeared in late 19th and early 20th century newspapers.
Family History Note Written By George W. King, August 18, 2000
Part 1
I have often thought about my early childhood educational experiences, but I don’t think I have ever fully appreciated how greatly my mother guided her children’s cognitive processes, and more importantly, helped to create an intense curiosity for knowledge. Before telling you something about her teaching methods and capabilities, I want to briefly tell you something about her own educational background.
Mom was an only child of a lady by the name of Molly Wilson. She was born in 1889 in the border town of Cairo, Illinois, located between the industrial north and the old south. I don’t know anything about her early education, but by 1908 she was enrolled at Fisk Normal School (Fisk University today) in Nashville, Tenn. where she met and married my father, Alfred G. King. Pop graduated from Fisk in 1908, and their first child was born the same year – I was born 20 years later in 1928.
My mother had a great love of poetry, and was especially fond of the works of Paul Laurence Dunbar who wrote in both the dialect of freed slaves and in the vernacular of educated Americans. She also had a great appetite for classical literature (e.g. we owned a set of The Harvard Classics.) She also had a love of music; she owned a piano which she played, and tried without success to give lessons to several of her seven children by a professional piano teacher. She tried hard to sing, but, God Bless Her, singing was not her forte (I can still hear her giving her somewhat off key tinny rendition of “I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen.”) Singing was a special attribute belonging to my father who had a great baritone voice (at Fisk he was a member of the renowned Fisk Jubilee Quartet.) She left Fisk during her third year, but about forty years later she returned to Nashville at A & I State College (now Tennessee State Univ.) and earned a BS in Education.
My earliest memories of family life seem to be when I was a maybe a four or five year old child. I think that all but one of the seven children was still living at our home place at 2301 12th Ave. in the Fort Cheatham Community of Chattanooga, Tenn. Much of the teaching/learning process took place at the breakfast and dinner table as follows:
Math lessons for the younger children would be of the sort wherein Mom might say that three of her hens laid two eggs each, and the other two laid one each – how many eggs were laid? Or she might ask that if you spent $0.15 for bread and $0.05 for an orange, how much change would you expect from a dollar? A technique used to teach fractions was especially effective; she might have a pie or cake with four or five children present at the table. Anyone could volunteer to cut the pie into equal portions for the number of people present (we would be taught that each portion was a third, fourth, fifth, etc.) The catch was that the person dividing the pie could not choose his or her portion until everyone else has made their selection (usually in order of youngest to oldest.) This was very effective in teaching the meaning of fractions. The conversation might also include addition of fractions and the meaning of the whole expressed as a fraction (2/2, 4/4, 7/7, etc.) At times she might say that this question is for two or three of the younger children to answer, and then ask the older if the solution offered was correct.
Language lessons involving spelling, vocabulary, and grammar followed a similar pattern. She might ask someone asking for water to spell the word, “water”; or she might ask what it means if she says the table is crowded; any grammatical error would result in a chorus of corrections – I don’t think I ever heard anyone incorrectly use the verb “to be”.
Mom maintained that any quotation not found in the Bible very likely came from Shakespeare, although her quotations included many other sources. Some of her favorites were as follows:
· “A fool and his money are soon parted.”
· “The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.”
· “Tell me not in mournful numbers, life is but an empty dream.”
· “Lias, Lias, blest de lawd, don’t you know de days erbroad?”
– From Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Poem, ‘In The Morning’
· “Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear.
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
– From Thomas Gray’s Poem, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Very often she might quote the first line of a famous quotation or poem, and then ask someone to quote the next line or give the source.
In addition, I think the first gift any child received was a coloring book or a book to read. As a result, by the time I reached grammar school I was well ahead of most or all of the rest of the class. Fortunately, my older sister, Johnetta, was a teacher at my first school just two blocks from my home. The educational problem was eased by the fact I would be allowed to privately read material at my own achievement level, while the rest of the class was studying material at a lower skill level. All of the above is not intended to suggest that I had a feeling of superiority over my fellow class mates. Even a hint of any such attitude by any child in our family would result in a stern (and more likely painful) rebuke. But what I now fully appreciate is that in the ongoing debate over, “the relative contributions of heredity versus environment on the intellect,” the contribution of environment cannot be too greatly impressed.
Part 2
This is the earliest event in my family’s history that I can recall hearing first hand. My father had been taken out of school after reaching the eighth grade, and was put to work in a “Saw Mill” to help support the family. The job was catching bark off of logs as they were trimmed. This is hard work for a man, much less a young boy (I did the same job for one summer while I was home from college). Anyhow, the operator for the trimmer would sing while trimming; “Oh they tell me of a land far beyond the sky”; (ZINNNNNNNNG): “Oh they tell me of a home far away; (ZINNNNNNNNG).
His Mother, Elizabeth, persuaded my Grandfather, Washington, to let my Dad return to school. A year or so later my Dad was “discovered” by a recruiter from Fisk University and was later enrolled at Fisk. Had it not been for the love and courage of a mother, he may have spent the rest of his life in that saw mill in Tullahoma, TN.