Paddy Springs School and Mischief

(The camera shows a close up of a historic marker. It says Paddy Springs School. In the background there is bushes and a green field. The film’s title appears: Mischief. Paddy Springs School).

(Leah Uffelman shares memories from her home over zoom)

Leah Uffelman: Discipline sounded very strict, and sometimes brutal at that time. But I think you almost needed that threat to keep law and order, that was the only resource that you had. In some schools, the schoolboard would go into the school and lay the law down to the children, threaten them basically. And say, “If you don’t listen to Mr. or Miss or whatever, you are going to get a beating, or you are going to get whatever.”

And they threatened them with this and sometimes that was necessary and sometimes it wasn’t.

I think that did help and even those students themselves admitted that if it wouldn’t be for that little threat over them that they probably would have been worse than they were. And all the tricks that they got carried away with that they thought was funny. Some of those things were not funny, especially if you were the teacher finding critters in your drawer or tacks on your seat.

(Fred Lyczewski shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Fred Lyczewski: The older boys went in the toilet and they had a barrel with cleaning compound that was empty, and they filled it up with toilet tissues. They had rifle bullets and they put them in there and lit the paper, and they exploded. That was during the war years, and that happened once, and nobody got hurt out of that.

(Leah Uffelman shares memories from her home over zoom)

Leah Uffelman: She saved up her dad’s cigarette butts and brought them to school and taught us how to smoke. We were little kids and our parents or nobody around us had cigarette butts, so this was quite a novel thing, so we’d be up in the barn and she was lighting up for us and teaching us how to smoke. Well, I never did learn, but anyway I had a good start, I had a good lesson in learning anyway. And we were lucky also that we didn’t start the barn on fire, but she was a responsible kid, she was very, very careful and made sure that we didn’t get the straw on fire.

(Monty Metzger shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Monty Metzger: We had a big stove at the back, and we’d make paper airplanes and we’d light the nose on fire and throw them around and of course the smoke is coming out the back. One time, one landed behind the piano and there was a fire going on there, so us little kids had to get the older kids to help move the piano. But we survived.

(Leonard Hagel shares memories from his home over zoom)

Leonard Hagel: We did respect our teacher, but she had to make sure she kept control of the kids. So the strap was always a threat. We didn’t have to use it very often. In fact, I never had a strap. My brothers talked about really being strapped a lot. But by the time I came along, it was frowned upon.

(Monty Metzger shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Monty Metzger: Grade one was the only time I got the strap in. My cousin was Earl Berreth, he and I took turns sharing a new reader and an old reader and one time when I come back from the library , he had switched books. So of course, I grabbed the cover, and he’s got the other cover, and we tore the cover off this brand-new book. So I got the strap on the hand, and he wouldn’t stand still, he ran around and round the teacher and he got it on the rear end. Poor little grade oners got the strap.

(Frank Schwengler shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Frank Schwengler: Sometimes you had to go kneel in the corner, or maybe you would have to write notes on the blackboard. So maybe 50 “Do not disturb someone else” or whatever it is. You would have to write that on the board maybe 50 times or something. But if you were real bad, they would send you up to the principle, but I never got up there, I was never quite that bad. But I wrote notes. And I stood in the corner the odd time too. Of course, you’d have to stand in front of everybody so that they could laugh at you, it was kind of something that you didn’t want to do again.

(Vera Schmaltz shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

Vera Schmaltz: I don’t remember any bullying.

(Leonard Hagel shares memories from his home over zoom)

Leonard Hagel: There was no secrets with my brothers and sisters going to the same school and everything went home to our parents. That was kind of strange.

(John Richter shares memories at the Beiseker Golden Years Club)

John Richter: Parents discipline at home was different than it is now. If we got in trouble at school, we also got in trouble at home.  That did happen on occasion. Stand in the corner for a while. If it was bad enough, the strap too. But we always in those years, parents generally supported the teachers so it was a good thing.

(the Beiseker Station Museum logo appears).