Category Archives: 1930s

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A Mysterious 1938 4th Grade Report Card

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This post is in the series Stories from Family Memorabilia, on researching family history, via odd objects and papers.

Today’s historical mystery is a 1938 4th Grade report card. It’s a strange report, from an odd location.

And as usual, I can’t pick up any old family paper without it stimulating my curiosity. Like Paul Harvey, the old American radio broadcaster, I want “the rest of the story.”

Despite the missing first name on this paper, I realize quickly I’m looking at my dad’s report card, since in 1938 he was 10 years old. Still, I noticed odd things about this report.

Harsh Teachers

For starters, one teacher’s comments were over-the-top insensitive. I’m not a fan of participation trophies, so mentioning he was sloppy or untidy was acceptable. But for his English teacher, H.D.H., to call him–any kid!–“lazy and unintelligent” raised my Mama hackles.

Dad as an adult was both industrious and bright, working as a creative landscape architect. So I put on my psych cap. (I formerly worked in both psychiatric and educational Occupational Therapy.) What the heck was going on with Dad at age 10?

Words from less harsh teachers described him in this report as “content with something much less than his best”, “aught to have done better”, “inclined to be erratic”, “rather mischievous”, disobedient, silly, slack, and forgetful. Ooooh, this is beginning to sound like a boy who had potential, but didn’t give a rip. But why?

Conversely, his French teacher wrote “He is keen and intelligent and well ahead for his age.” His Scripture teacher wrote “listens well and answers intelligently.” And while Dad was 10, the average age of the class was 11 years old. Hmm. I’ve worked with gifted children who misbehaved out of sheer boredom.

Children on the Move

Finally I notice the words at the top: Form: “Remove” and in the tiniest cursive imaginable at the bottom of the report, “Knowing he is leaving has unsettled him, I think.”

So Dad was leaving. To go where? And where, in the world (literally) was this school, teaching French and Latin to 4th graders?

The odds were high he had just come from another country, and soon leaving for another. You see, Dad was the son of an American foreign service officer. I have a list of dates of dates and places where Dad’s family lived.

This list below, created by one of Dad’s sisters, reveals that Dad moved four times in his first 10 years of life. Born in Winnipeg Canada, he then lived in Arlington Virginia, Trieste Italy, and Plymouth England, then later that same year to Lynchburg, VA.

List of places Don Winslow lived including Winnipeg, Canada, Trieste, Italy, and Plymouth England.
Dad was born in 1928. He lived in four countries before age ten.

Where was Ravenswood School?

The location of Ravenswood School puzzled me. In 1938 Dad lived in two places. Historical sites for Lynchburg don’t show any school by that name, yet four hours from there is the town of Ravenswood, West Virginia. Three schools there had the name Ravenswood.

I found in my ancestry app that while Dad was at Ravenswood (in January) his grandmother had died in Lynchburg.

So the Lynchburg timing was right. But wait! But why would they dump him in a school four hours away at age 10, unless it was a boarding school? They didn’t have boarding schools in WV, right?

Also unusual to me was the inclusion of Latin and French in an American 4th Grade classroom, even in 1938. The wording was weird too: “Form 4” instead of “Grade 4” with the school term was labeled “Easter.”

I called my lifeline (my brother) who said dad had been in a boarding school at some point in his life. So thinking the town of Ravenswood, WV might be a red herring, I Googled Plymouth, England. Lo and behold, there was a Ravenswood School in England, too.

Then began a deep dive for me down a dark hole for two days.

British boarding schools for 8-year olds?!

That Ravenswood was indeed a boarding school. And from the dates on the report card, I realized Dad had been there at ages 9 and 10. Possibly at even a younger age. WHAT?

Although my grandparents were American, it was particularly common for children of diplomats and others in working government service in other countries to send their children to boarding schools. The justification for it was that it would supposedly give children more stability and an excellent education.

But for some reason, I always thought this involved the teen years, not children still clutching teddy bears and wanting mom to read bedtime stories to them.

Then I found the website Boarding School Survivors: Therapeutic help for those affected by boarding, created by Nick Duffell, also author of the book The Making of Them: The British Attitude to Children and the Boarding School System.

I was shocked to finally understand one of the lines in tiny print at the bottom of Dad’s report card: “too many stripes for silly behavior and disobedience.” That meant beatings with a cane. I was also distressed reading about how much bullying and even more extreme abuse took place within early boarding schools, meted out by older children.

Dad, born in February, at the time of this report card was only 10 years and 1 month old, so the report was mostly about his behavior at age 9.

Boarding school documentaries reveal harsh truths

I then watched two documentaries on YouTube showing 8 year olds being sent off to boarding school in more recent years. I was disturbed by how it distressed those particularly young children. Leaving Home At Eight | Boarding School Children follows four little girls, and The Making of Them (1994) (also connected with Nick Duffell) several 8 and 9-year-old boys.

Listening to one little boy in the latter documentary broke my heart. He had quickly learned to shut down his emotions and be a brave little man. Boys who cried for their mothers were particularly targeted for bullying.

Strangely, those two modern documentaries revealed distress in some of the mothers who felt pressured to send their kids to boarding schools. They were truly persuaded it would be good for them. Some believed it would give their children more stability, what with the family moving often with Dad’s work. Many of these women had husbands who had been in boarding schools themselves, so for the fathers that was all they knew.

I urge you to watch those documentaries, but with a tissue handy.

Raising resilient kids at on the move

This deep dive has me appreciating the permission I always had, being an American, to educate my children in a variety of ways and even when moving to new locations. As a child, I moved every three years: Dad had apparently caught the moving bug.

I feel that caused growth in me as child and helped me to learn to adapt well. My husband and I while raising our three children lived in three different U.S. states and one other country (Norway.) Of course, it was not always easy for the kids changing schools. But they all grew into adults who love to travel.

Educationally, depending on each of my own child’s individual needs, we used a variety of methods. Our children experienced a mix of public school (including in Norway) and home school–depending on each one’s individual needs at the time–growing up to be brilliant and loving adults now teaching their own children to explore.

Fresh understanding

Now I know more than I wanted to know from a single piece of paper from my vintage paper pile. But it’s got me thinking about my dad and how it may have affected him.

It also has given me more insight into my Grandmother’s writings about living in British Raj, India. She had commented with some horror on young children being sent away from India to England to boarding schools, while both parents remained in India. Once they were shipped off, some children didn’t see their parents for years. Grandma had come from an extremely tight and loving family, so this shook her.

I want to weep for all the precious moments British moms missed (as did my Dad’s American mom) with their children in boarding school. Some of you know I wrote a book called Delight in Your Child’s Design (Second Edition, Kindle) so know my passion for that. I can only hope that those moms now know there are ways to educate children well, while keeping them close.

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Hayden Howard: his creative wordplay in Ten Rounds for the All-Time Champ

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In his fun short stories including Ten Rounds for the All-Time Champ, John Hayden Howard used creative wordplay and unique characterization in 1940s to 1960s historical settings.

The Oxford Language Dictionary defines wordplay as “the witty exploitation of the meanings and ambiguities of words.” My own definition might be “describing settings and characters in an unusually creative way that make me laugh, or say a-hah!”

In John Hayden Howard‘s short story Ten Rounds for the All-Time Champ (in REAWAKENED WORLDS: Vintage Dystopian and Sci-Fi by a Master Storyteller) note what I mean about his wordplay and characterization:

Kindle Quote from the story Ten Rounds for the All-Time Champ, in the book Reawakened Worlds: Vintage Dystopian and Sci-Fi by a Master Storyteller, John Hayden Howard.

When I see words like speed graphics and box brownies, I get the gist of them while knowing I’ve a bit to learn about old-timey camera equipment. Since Hayden wrote this story between 1951-’52 (based on the address on his original manuscript, written in St. Augustine FL) and set the story in the 1940s, there was no need for him to explain what kind of equipment this was to his readers back then.

But for the curious 2020s crowd, this is what those historic cameras looked like:

Graflex Speed Graphic camera (Creative Commons)
Kodak Brownie camera

Also note the way Hayden describes the appearance of the reporters: “Country, with bowl-head haircuts, pants don’t break on their shoe-tops, one still with a price tag on his coat.” So much imagery there! Those words also reveal the opinions and personality of the main character, The Champ, telling his story in first person.

Also in this same story, Hayden drops breadcrumbs about time travelers. Pay close attention to those breadcrumbs, as they greatly impact what happens at the end of the story. Who, exactly, is the champ fighting?

Some strong yet subtle clues come in near the end of the story, for example: “You were my hero when I was a kid.” Don’t miss those clues! The last few lines of the story are especially subtle reveals. If you aren’t already familiar with Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey, and Jack Johnson, see their biographies.

Here are hints though: these were the time periods in which these 3 boxers were champions—Joe Lewis (1934-1951), Jack Dempsey (1919-1926), and Jack Johnson (1908-1915). Galento fought Joe Lewis in 1931. There’s a fun Wikipedia article on Galento, who was said to have boxed a kangaroo and then a bear, as publicity stunts. And as you keep all these dates in mind, remember that the boxing match in Ten Rounds for the All-Time Champ was set in the late 1940s. I wish I’d known all this before I read this story, as it makes it twice the fun.

I must be honest though that Hayden fooled me. When I realized all the previously mentioned boxers were real, I assumed Redhead must be too. I spent an hour searching the internet for a famous boxer named Taylor in 1951. I felt like a dummy later, realizing it was impossible, because Hayden wrote this story when he was only 26 years old. Meaning–all boxers he knew of had to be alive then or before that. Any future boxers would still be babies or not born yet. If this still puzzles you, or if you get it, tweet me @LaurieSargent. I’m just hoping not to introduce a story spoiler here if you intend to read Reawakened Worlds.

The story is especially fun to read in the print editions, as the ten rounds are laid out neatly, and the collectable hardcover is a delight to hold. Can you tell that I’m one of Hayden Howard’s greatest fans? Volume Two will be out in 2024 and hopefully a boxed set. Also, the audiobook makes the The Champ’s boxing match exciting.

I admit that I’m biased, but I never would have compiled and edited his works had I not loved his stories and creative characters. I must add too that I’m not the kind of person who likes to watch boxing, so this story drew me in specifically by the characters, historical references, and surprise ending.

Laurie

See my posts on other sci-fi short stories in Reawakened Worlds, Vol 1:

We Specialists (a dystopian reality check about following assigned roles)

Gremmie’s Reef (a CA teen surfer makes an unusual underwater discovery)

The Tragedy of Henry Diddoh (a Frankenstein-ish story about a professor)

Ten Rounds for the All-Time Champ (a 1940s boxer meets a time-traveling opponent)

Mutiny in the Orbit of Uranus (an anti-gravity space battle)

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Podcast Interview: Parenting Personalities and History

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For her Heart of the Matter podcast, Cynthia L. Simmons and I discussed parent-child personality differences and homeschooling. We also looked back through history at one 1930s mom’s parenting style.

Interview with Cynthia L. Simmons and Laurie Winslow Sargent: Heart of the Matter Radio

For the Oct 2, 2020 podcast, How to Delight in Your Child as You Homeschool, Cynthia asked me great questions related to the book Delight in Your Child’s Design. We talked about ways to inject more fun into parenting that allow children to learn more organically. In other words, when they’re having fun, they don’t always realize they’re also learning. We also talked about leaving a legacy of playful parenting, and about how in some ways parenting has changed little in a century. In this blog post I share a bit of what we discussed, plus a time capsule tip:

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A Reluctant Memsahib

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Gladys Gose Pearce (American) as a memsahib in India in the 1920s. Group photo with house servants wearing New Year's garlands.

In 1920s British Raj India, independent, hardworking American Gladys was expected to have servants — whether she wanted them or not.

As I write Gladys’s biography of her years in 1920s to 1930s India, I strive to put in context her role at that time as a memsahib. This was a century ago. She and Ken (Americans) had been thrust into the British Raj system, which they didn’t entirely embrace.

Yet they didn’t entirely reject it, either. As master-servant relationships in general (especially between races and economic statuses) make me uncomfortable, here’s my attempt to look at Ken and Gladys’s roles as objectively as I can.

Definitions of memsahib vary. Merriam-Webster defines it as “a white foreign woman of high social status living in India especially: the wife of a British official”.  (The word “white” is rather telling about attitudes in the time of the Raj. Ugh.)

The Collins Dictionary has a simpler definition: “title for a woman in a position of authority and/or the wife of a Sahib”. That, I think, more accurately applied to Gladys, being American.

Eventually the term encompassed Indian upper class women as well. In Economic and Political Weekly, Memsahib: Who Are You?, Swastika Hore points out: “A time would come when the upper classes of Indians would be addressed as sahibs and their wives memsahibs by people lower down the social scale–evidently a colonial hangover.”

As I include diary entries in blog posts that include references to Ken and Gladys managing servants, readers incorrectly may assume that where there are servants, there must be masters who feel entitled. Conversely, Ken and Gladys were genuinely hard working people who had not grown up with servants nor expected to have them.

A Forester and a Teacher as Sahib and Memsahib

Ken, at age sixteen (in 1915) graduated from high school and worked in logging camps. He studied forestry in college, then worked as an assistant professor before being hired by the British Indian government in 1923 at 25 years old.

In my post Ken in the Raj, he describes his arrival in India, when he obviously enjoyed getting elevated attention and honor. Yet during his following ten years in India, Ken worked tirelessly, often from sunup to sundown, in Indian logging camps and mills. He never expected more work from others than he did himself. His clothes grew so sweaty he sometimes changed his work clothes three times in a day.

As for Gladys, she’d been a working woman before moving to India: a self-supporting junior high school teacher. She also was her own cook and housekeeper. However, in India as memsahib of Ken (an important government appointee) Gladys was suddenly expected to have servants do all her household chores. She was often annoyed at not being able to simply do them herself and her own way.

Once, when expecting guests, Gladys wanted to sweep cigar ashes off her veranda. However, her butler (main servant) Freddy was horrified at the thought of Gladys doing it herself, so refused to find her a broom. He also refused to do it himself, considering it below his caste and dignity to sweep. He insisted he must instead fetch a “sweeper” from another village.