FEATURE STORY 

Students travel back in time at historic Cahill School

Thousands visit Edina’s one-room schoolhouse each year

Adapted from an article that appeared in the Spring 2003 edition of “About Town,” published by the City of Edina

Dressed in a white blouse, black jacket, long skirt, boots and simple brooch, the schoolmarm outside the one-room school rings the bell signaling the start of the day. The students who have come to class file into two rows and enter the school through separate doors, one for girls and the other for boys. Most of the girls are dressed in long skirts with bonnets and the boys in denim overalls or white shirts with suspenders. Some carry small tin buckets with their lunch inside, covered with red handkerchiefs.

Inside the school, the schoolmarm addresses the students, rapt with attention. "Are you brave enough to journey back to 1900?" she asks. "Do not be afraid; stand strong. I will turn in a circle and when I face you again, we will pretend it is 1900." With 27 pairs of young eyes watching her every move, the schoolmarm turns 360 degrees. Then, she says, "You didn't come to school today on a big yellow bus. You walked a long way -- probably two to five miles. You are all farm children in the Township of Edina. Let's be seated."

Desks are assigned according to height, with shorter students sitting in front and taller students in the back. There is silence during the seating process, which takes several minutes. Waiting to be beckoned to a desk, students stand straight up with their hands at their sides. The schoolmarm, they know, does not stand for fidgeting or whispering.

Once they are all seated the teacher says, "Place one hand properly over the other on top of your desk and keep a pleasant look on your face. This is how all students sit in 1900." Then the schoolmarm explains the rules for her classroom: do right, control yourself and enjoy yourself. Then, class begins.

Classes organized by the Edina Historical Society at the Cahill School are taught as they would have been at the turn of the century.  Topics of the day include grammar, penmanship, arithmetic, reading, manners, morals, hygiene/physiology, weather and history.  In addition, indoor and outdoor games are played and a spelling bee is held. Lunch is eaten next door at the historic Grange Hall, which once served as a meeting hall and social center for pioneer Edina farmers.

“Through our programs at the Cahill School, the history of Edina is presented to children in a real and graphic manner," said Edina Historical Society Board Chair Kathleen Wetherall. "Through the one-day classes there, children identify with the people and events of early Edina and the rest of Minnesota. At the same time, one of the few remaining one-room country schools in the county has been restored and preserved for future generations.

“The children love coming to the school," said Wetherall. "They are enraptured. One little boy was having such a good time that he didn’t want to go back to the present year. He hid under his desk, hoping to stay in the year 1900!"

The one-room rural schools that were once the mainstay of education in Minnesota have largely disappeared. Of those that exist, many have been abandoned or converted for other uses. The Cahill School, relocated from the Cahill neighborhood of Edina to its present location in Tupa Park, remains as a place for education. The Cahill School operates from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. every day that classes are in session during the school year. Four teachers or “schoolmarms" take turns during the week leading the classes.

The historical educational center was first proposed in 1971 to give students the opportunity to spend a typical day in a one-room country school of the early 1900s. It opened in the fall of 1975. The main objective now, as it was then, is to help children experience history by actually sitting in the old wooden desks, using slate boards, looking through school books of the period and playing old­-fashioned games.

Elementary school students (usually grades two to four) come from all over the region to the Cahill School for lessons in history. A school from Superior, Wis., comes the furthest on an annual basis. The Edina Historical Society books classes in August, before the start of the school year. Classes pay [$180] .