Today, he'd be charged with assault

By LORNA THACKERAY
Of The Gazette Staff

Think your teacher epitomizes evil when she sends you the principal's office for merely lobbing a curse word at the obnoxious kid across the playground?

And how about that F you got in history? Is it your fault that daydreams of rock star glory are more interesting than the American Revolution?

While you're wallowing in angst at the approach of a new school year and new classroom ogres to battle, pause a moment to honor the legend of the 321.

Yes, that's the number of students enrolled in Billings schools in 1886, the last stand in the two-year reign of Principal George Washington Shoemaker.

Smart and successful
A brilliant man, by all accounts, he'd studied medicine and taught school in rural New York before heading West and winding up in what was then a 2-year-old railroad town. Maybe his uncle, the Rev. Mr. Comfort, a Methodist missionary in the wilds of Montana, lured him to the edge of the American frontier in 1884.

Many students under his charge probably thought it more likely that the devil had something to do with it.

It's hard to say 122 years later, and with scant contemporary evidence, whether his students remembered what actually happened or whether they began to believe the stories they told to scare their siblings. But when The Billings Gazette interviewed pioneers for a special edition in 1931, the kindest words used about Shoemaker were "strict disciplinarian" and "eccentric."

The newspaper story, penned for The Gazette by W. H. Banfill, said Shoemaker "seemed to delight in inflicting punishment. The basement was a chamber of horrors to the youngsters who were regaled by the older children with tales of terrible whippings, which the yells and entreaties, which sometimes floated up from the lower regions, clinched in their minds."

Tricks of his trade
During writing lessons, the principal would prowl the aisles, a long pointer in his hands, alert for any deviation from the hand's approved position, one former student remembered. A false move brought a sharp crack over the knuckles. Another pioneer remembered a leather strap that was not sparingly applied.

Keep in mind that the children under his care were generally not teenagers hopped up on raging hormones. Billings didn't have a high school until much later, and finishing eighth grade was generally considered a good education.

Not everyone in what was still a rough-and-tumble town took kindly to the tactics of the educator. An unhappy parent reportedly gave Shoemaker two black eyes once, though the Spartan school board minutes of the time did not reflect any action taken against the parent or student.

And an Oct. 24, 1885, story in The Gazette noted: "The principal is recovering from a sprained ankle, which is said to be the sequel of an earlier incident when an older girl, whom he attempted to punish, pushed him down a flight of stairs."

Shoemaker seemed as anxious to see the last of the classroom as his students were to see the last of him. He submitted his resignation on April 15, 1886, notifying the school board that he would not return for the next school year.

An outbreak of scarlet fever spared the children the last two months of the principal's tenure. At the meeting when Shoemaker's resignation was accepted, the board also voted to close school for the rest of the year. It probably was good timing all the way around for Shoemaker. He stayed in Billings and opened a pharmacy, later bought out by the Chapple brothers.

Shoemaker wasn't the last, or maybe even the worst, when it came to corporal punishment. Rubber hoses, it seems, were standard issue in early Billings. Not until 1911 did school Superintendent Ward Nye issue restrictions on their use.

"To the principals and teachers of the Billings Schools," he wrote. "Should a teacher have occasion to administer corporal punishment, she is hereby directed to do it in the presence of her principal and with the rubber tube provided for the purpose. Should a principal have occasion to administer corporal punishment, she is hereby directed to do it in the presence of another teacher of her building and with the rubber tube provided for the purpose."

As the town tamed, so did the use of physical punishment. By February 1917, the school board determined that students could no longer be subjected to such abuses in the heat of the moment. It passed a resolution that said, "In the future no corporal punishment shall be inflicted on any pupil attending the schools of this district, unless the approval of the superintendent of schools and the district is first obtained, and the superintendent is present when the punishment is administered."

When schools open their doors Aug. 26, you won't have to check for rubber hoses, leather straps or menacing pointers. Smile, heave a sigh of relief and pay homage to students of bygone days who knew the literal sting of failing to sit up straight, pay attention and write with a flowing hand.

Story available at http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2008/08/02/news/local/27-today.txt

Published on Saturday, August 02, 2008.
Last modified on 8/2/2008 at 1:01 am