More stories from Kjettestorp School

Kjettestorp School 1936 -- if you recognize more of the students,
please let me know and I'll add them in when I update this entry :)

"Our school days always started with a hymn. The teacher played the pump organ and we sang. Then the first lesson of the day was a Bible lesson, bibliskhistoria. We studied bible history and we memorized Bible verses. That was one of the subjects. When we got into third grade, we started to learn handicrafts. Knitting was the first thing for girls. I remember the first potholder I knitted; it got so crooked and looked so bad.

Then we were going to knit socks, long socks almost up to the knee. It went alright until I got to the heel. Then the teacher ripped it up and ripped it up. Finally she said, “You’re getting so far behind. You’ll have to take this home and do it.” I cried all the way home. That was a disgrace to me to have to take it home when the other girls didn’t. When I came home crying, Mama asked what was wrong so I told her and she said, “Brita, you sit down and knit the heel for her.” Brita was five years older than me and she was always really good at handicrafts too. When I came to school the next day, I was scared to death to show the teacher that heel, but she called me up and took one look at it and said, “You didn’t do this.” I said, “No.” She wanted to know, “Well, who did it?” I quickly said, “Brita did but Mama said she should.” I guess the teacher had enough respect for Mama so she said, “Sit down and continue.”  I wanted to go home and give Mama and Brita big hugs. And now that I think about it, I might have told that story already. Oh well.

This is Brita, Sara and Henrik in, I'm guessing, 1922.

I know it doesn't really fit with school days, but I just

found it and it's too cute not to share!

The other girls, especially Greta i Herrefall and Karin i Blåsten, they were very good at handicrafts. I have a pillow still to this day that Greta made for me. She probably was through school then but she gave it to me for my birthday one year. Greta died when she was 22 years old so this pillow means something special to me.

Erik Johansson was strict but he was fair. Everybody liked him. I remember some of the big boys when they were going to stand up and answer a question, they had to stand up and stand up straight. They had a habit of leaning on the desk while they answered, only half standing up, but with the new teacher they had to get used to standing up straight while they answered.

All the parents of course loved this teacher, but in time, he moved and we got Gunnar Brolin. He is a teacher who I did not like very much at all. He thought he was going to be so modern and show the country folk how things were done. He and Dad were on two different sides in terms of politics. Dad was in the Bondeförbundet, the farmer party, which was a very conservative party and Gunnar Brolin was in Folkpartiet which was more liberal. He tried in several ways to get after Dad and at times, it seemed like it was trying to get at Dad through us kids. He didn’t give Lennart the grades that Dad thought he should have, so Dad went and wanted to see the work that Lennart had done and asked the teacher to explain the grades to him. Well, however it went, the teacher said, “Oh, I forgot to count this paper and this paper” and he gave Lennart better grades. He had to erase the old grades. Dad said he didn’t want that on Lennart’s records as he went through life.

I remember one time we were supposed to write essays. Magistern put several different subjects up on the board, and we had to choose one to write about. I chose “Tre Dagar i Uganda.” “Three days in Uganda.” The funny thing, of course, was that I knew nothing about Uganda except that it was in Africa! I had to study up and find out about it in some books.

When Henrik was still in school there and Erik Johansson was our teacher, the kids were going to draw a map of a country and Henrik drew a map of Mongolia. Farbror Folke had brought home several maps and Dad was always interested in maps, so he and Henrik had studied that map. Well, Henrik put in a river that Magister Johansson didn’t know existed. It wasn’t on his map. So Henrik had to bring Farbror Folke’s map to school in order to get graded because he had something that was more up to date than the teacher. Magister Johansson thought that was pretty special.

This is some of Mom's schoolwork from first grade.
It's a little embarrassing that Mom's handwriting
was better when she was six than mine is now!

When I was in the lower grades, the good students sat in the back and the naughty ones or the ones who couldn’t concentrate, they sat in the first row. I had always been in the back row; I had never sat in the first row. Well it happened that I bended over across the aisle to whisper something to another girl. The teacher was helping another student in that row and she turned around and told me to sit up and not whisper. Well, it went a little while, and whatever it was I thought I just had to whisper it to this girl and the teacher caught me again so I was told a second time. I just couldn’t keep it to myself, so it happened a third time. Then the teacher said, “Now you will go and sit in the first row.” I had to trade places with a kid there. Oh how embarrassed I was. I thought I might just melt through the floor.

One time in Margaretha’s class, the teacher was trying to explain something about history. I don’t remember exactly what the lesson was about but it was something in the past. She tried to get the kids to understand what BC, Before Christus, meant and how long ago that was. When she got done, a little girl held up her hand, Brita Forsby, and asked, “Was fröken born before Christus or after?”

Another time, there was a little girl in Lennart’s class named Karin i Grönliv and they were going to write and essay on a subject they chose. Then they were going to stand up and read it to the class. This little girl got up and read, “Once upon a time there was a cow-catcher who went out to catch cows.” Then she sat down again. Just imagine how the class started to giggle."