Semmes Heritage Park -Home of the Oldest CONTINUOUS in use School in Alabama !

1/31/2017

The school bell is still ringing at the 1902 one room Semmes School, an Alabama Landmark as the oldest continuous in use school in the state of Alabama,

Children on field trips time travel to 1902 to experience a hands on history lesson in reading writing and arithmetic, and learn of life in the olden days when children had chores to do before and after school. It was good to work, because that was just the way life was.

The first thing you did when you got up was to run outside to the outhouse. Then before breakfast you did your morning chores. You had eggs to gather, chickens to feed and water. The cow had to be milked. To get water you had to pump water and carry it in a bucket to where it was needed. When you were done with your chores you had breakfast and got ready for school. You walked to school or rode in a wagon, but mostly you walked. When you got home from school you had chores to do all over again.

Children on field trips experience pumping water. washing clothes on a rub board, looking in a outhouse. (modern restrooms are in the chapel) A peak in the cabin reveals a rope bed and items from yesteryear's and how it must to have been to live in a one room cabin.

Demonstrations of the comparison of simple tools to modern day tools are observed. A hand power grist mill shows the making of grits, corn meal and biddy feed.

It is always amazing when we come to the end of the day and I tell the children we have to time travel back to the current year at the outcry of NO, I want to stay here!

Even in today's modern technology there is something to be said about the olden day ways of learning, It is interesting to note that many tried and true old education concepts are being once again revisited. New methods are not always better. Sometimes, as the old saying goes "We have thrown the baby out with the bathwater."