[Magdalen] Temps Perdue

[Jay Weigel]

Kindergarten was very much a German invention and as such, brought to the
US by educated German immigrants. In Wisconsin, where we grew up, David, it
spread outward from that great Socialist city of Milwaukee to the
Progressive city of Madison and elsewhere through Wisconsin, very much, as
you say, via the network of "normal schools" or teachers' colleges. When I
was growing up in Madison, the Catholic school system, with the exception
of Edgewood School, which was connected with Edgewood college, still did
not have kindergartens in any of their schools. Some of the kids went to
public schools for kindergarten and transferred out, but the majority
simply didn't go. There may have been a kindergarten at Our Lady Queen of
Peace on what was then the far west side, but I don't recall; it was in a
fairly progressive neighborhood and was the only Catholic school that did
not go through 8th grade, stopping at 6th and sending the majority of its
kids to public schools thereafter.

My brothers, and all the other kids who went through Randall school from
the 1940s until sometime in the 1960s, had the same set of kindergarten
teachers. You might be in one teacher's class, but you knew the other
teacher too, because the classes did many activities together. At that
time, the separation between groups of kindergarteners was between those
who were in the morning class and those in the afternoon class, as
kindergarten then was only half-day. Older children were often placed in
the afternoon class as it was thought they were less likely to be sleepy or
need naps in the afternoon. I don't know how my February-born brother
escaped that! It was not unusual for much older kids, even high schoolers,
who had been in Mrs. Wahlin's or Miss Drews' kindergarten, to drop by after
school to say hello, they were so much loved.

I don't even remember my kindergarten teacher's name. I think it might have
been Mrs. Bender. I went to kindergarten in Lincoln, NE.

On Tue, May 1, 2018 at 4:21 AM, M J _Mike_ Logsdon <mjl at ix.netcom.com>
wrote:

> >>>Actually, my little home village did not, in the 1940's, offer
> kindergarten.  My mother, for long segments of that period,
> was hospitalized for problems with what was then referred
> to as "female trouble," that in her case seems to be a
> prolapsed uterus with lots of related symptoms.  I was therefore
> farmed out for much of that year to stay at my Godmother Gladys'
> home in Superior, Wisconsin.  The grade school just nearby her
> house was sponsored by what was then Superior State Normal
> School (now UW-Superior), and, of course, they had the new-fangled
> kindergarten.<<<
>
> The pattern was apparently already struck in stone, at least in some sense.
>
> My kindergarten teacher was Mrs Eisemann, who later ran an independent
> bookshop in Salinas.  I bought a book from her in 1991.  She rang me up at
> the register.  Some years later she just up and sold and was never heard
> from again.  I wish to high heaven I'd said, as I was shelling out my few
> dollars for the book I bought, "Hi Mrs Eisemann.  Remember me?"  She was
> from that generation that would have remembered me like it was genetics.
> For all I knew, she did, and didn't say anything.
>
> M J (Mike) Logsdon.
>
> "Aaugh[.]" -- Charles Brown.
> "Avoid dull needles and use a soft cloth." -- E Kovacs.
> "...[My mouth is a] shithole..." -- 45th US President.
>