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https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/0bacb7c67ddd82623c1891caed2c2ae7.mp3
926b22193be83e92f3ff03378e1576b2
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/7279378da62d287a2467250bf1170b40.pdf
8f9a8b5d3b6eecb22ef29b88d6635df0
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Oral History Transcript
Appalachian State University • Collection 111, Tape 122/123
Interviewee: Don Davis
Interviewer: Donna Clausen
1973 July 5
This is an interview with Mr. Don Davis for the Appalachian Oral History Project by Donna
Clausen on July 5, 1973.
CD: Donna Clawson
RD: Don Davis
CD: Mr. Davis, when were you born?
RD: July 30, 1986.
CD: What year was it when you started school?
RD: I suppose I started school in 1902.
CD: What school did you go to?
RD: Laurel Ford, a little school about a mile toward Todd, off on the right hand side of the road.
CD: What kind of school was it? Was it one-room?
RD: It was a one-room school. The house was made of “boxing,” we called it in those days. The
plants set-up and down, and enclosed the house. Part of it was sealed; part of it wasn’t. It was a
rather cold building in the winter. It was heated by a stove sitting near the middle of the room.
You’d call it a shack if you saw it now.
CD: Was it not a very large building?
RD: Small building.
CD: How many pupils were in the school?
RD: I’m sorry that I don’t know, but there were pupils from the first to the seventh grade. I’d
say 20 to 30.
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�CD: How many teachers did you have?
RD: One teacher, Miss Margaret Dobbins. She lived a half-mile from the school.
CD: Did she board with someone or was she from the area?
RD: Her home was in the area. She stayed at home. I passed by her house every morning as I
went to school. I usually waited for her.
CD: How far did you have to walk to school?
RD: Oh, it was something over a mile. I doubt whether it was a mile and a half.
CD: What time of year were you in school?
RD: I think we started in September. The first school I went to, I guess, was for four months.
CD: Can you remember your first day of school?
RD: I’m afraid I can’t remember and pick out the first day as an individual, vivid picture.
CD: Did you go through your entire seven years there?
RD: No, I changed several times. When I had been going to school for three or four years, they
moved the school house down to what I would refer to as Mr. James Miller’s bottom, and built
another house. I don’t remember how many years I went to it, but when I was 12 or 13 a new
district was created in this area.
It was called the Tugman School District. They had to build a house, and for the first term they
used a little storehouse that belonged to Mrs. Emma Stevens, about a mile and a half from
where we are on the road toward Boone.
Then the following year they had the Tugman Schoolhouse built, which was on the road toward
Boone near where Donald Woodring now lives. It was a much better house than I’d been
accustomed to, but it had only one large room and one teacher.
CD: What kind of subjects did you study in school?
RD: We studied the traditional subjects I guess: reading, writing, and arithmetic. To that were
added geography and history, civil government, physiology. And the last year that I went to the
Tugman School we studied a course in elementary agriculture.
CD: Did one teach all those subjects?
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�RD: One teacher attempted to teach all the subjects. The last year that I went to Tugman
School, I went there, I guess, three years, a couple of the seventh grade boys assisted a little by
working with the second and third grades part of the time.
CD: What kind of equipment and furnishings did the school have when you were going to
school?
RD: When I went to the first school there were no desks, and crude benches. I’m not sure in the
second school whether we had any desks, but still it was largely benches. In the Tugman School
we had well-constructed desks, through they were homemade. But they had sufficient room for
our books, and the top of the desk was large enough to keep all our books and for our writings.
CD: What kind of writing materials did you have?
RD: The first writing equipment that I recall was what we called a slate. It was made of a type of
rock, and had a wooden frame around it. We marked on it with what we called a slate pencil,
which was also some type of rock. And of course we had some paper. But I can remember when
it was something to have a paper tablet in school, and a pencil to write with.
CD: Did you have textbooks for every subject?
RD: No, we didn’t have any writing books that I recall. Any books that we had were individually
owned. At least they were not furnished by the state or county. It was hoped that each child
would have a set of books. Often, it wasn’t true. Many times, two or three pupils tried to work
from the same book.
CD: What did you do for recreation, like when you had a recess or something?
RD: We played various types of ball, and what we called “Dare base.” We threw the ball over
the house, caught it over there, ran around on the other side, and went around and the fellow
on the other side caught it and ran around the people on that side before he could get around
to the opposite side, and thereby caused him to belong to the side which had been successful.
In the Dare-base, we divided into teams, somebody chose the players. One from one side
would go over and touch something near the other side that they dared us to touch, and then
they attempted to catch us before we could get back to the home base. If they did, we became
their player. Of course the game was won if they could catch all of those players.
CD: Did boys and girls play that game?
RD: Yes. Another game we played was a game called “Bull-pen.” It was a type of ball where part
of the players were in a circle and part of them were inside the circle. The ones that composed
the circle would hit a boy within the circle, and then they would run a certain distance to a
defined spot.
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�The one whom they’d hit would stand at a definite place and try to hit one of the players who’d
formed the circle. If they could hit him, he had to come inside the circle, and the other fellows
were around him.
CD: That sounds exciting. What kind of discipline did the teacher use?
RD: Various kinds of discipline. All the teachers that I recall used various types of corporal
punishment. Sometimes they switched pupils; sometimes they paddled them in the hand with a
ruler. Sometimes they had them stand on one foot. Some had them put their nose in a ring on
the blackboard, and then put each hand up on the board at a mark and stand for a definite
time.
An they were kept it, if they wouldn’t study or misbehaved. When the others went out, they
were assigned something to do inside. And there were times when they were required to learn
something extra because they’d been lazy and hadn’t learned what they should’ve learned.
CD: Did they ever have to memorize anything?
RD: Yes. Sometimes they memorized as a form of punishment. I guess that was bad, but the
teacher had to do something. Teachers, then as now, I presume, were often at their wit’s end
to know what was best to do to control the children.
Various teachers had various rules, of course. Some expected a much quieter room than others.
Some were stricter about the lesson being well-prepared than others. That, I supposed, still
holds.
CD: Can you remember the qualifications that your teachers had to have to teach?
RD: The earliest teacher that I had was reported to have had a first-grade certificate. That
doesn’t mean a certificate to teach the first grate. There were “First-grade” and “Second-grade”
certificates issued by the county superintendent when the teachers had followed and
completed a definite line of work.
It was assumed that a teacher who had a First-grade certificate would be a superior teacher to
one who had a second. There may have been “Third-grade” certificates. I’m not sure about
that. As now, a certificate was not always definite proof of what type of teaching a person
would be able to do.
CD: Do you know what kind of salary the teachers received?
RD: My first teacher received a dollar a day. When I first attempted to teach I received a dollar
and a quarter. The last day I ever taught, I received more salary than I did in the first month, or
any month of my first year.
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�CD: Where did you go to school after you finished grade school?
RD: Appalachian Training School. There were no high schools available in this area where one
could stay home and go to high school. Because of that I didn’t go to high school as soon as I
should have gone. I went back to grade school. I might have entered high school if there’d been
one located close enough home so that I could’ve stayed at home and gone.
CD: What year did you start at Appalachian Training School?
RD: The beginning of 1917, I guess.
CD: Did you have to stay there to go to school?
RD: Yes. I boarded with a Mr. Henry Lewis and his family.
CD: How long did you go to school there?
RD: I went to Appalachian Training School, and Appalachian State Normal, and Appalachian
Teachers College off and on, periods in the summer. I went one full year during the time but
largely taught in the regular school years. During that time I taught in the regular school year.
Sometimes I began at Christmas because schools closed in those days generally before
Christmas.
Other times I just went to summer school, sometimes one summer term and sometimes two.
There was a time when I needed credit toward a certificate, thought I did, that Appalachian
wasn’t prepared to give and I went to the University to the summer school: two summer
schools in 1928, two summer schools in 1929 at Chapel Hill.
Then I had the certificate equivalent to what one would secure by graduating from a four-year
college. But it seemed after I’d secured that that I still wasn’t satisfied with the training and I
continued until I finally earned a degree from Appalachian, which was issued in 1937.
CD: What was the first year that you began teaching?
RD: In the fall of 1917.
CD: Where were you teaching?
RD: Zionville. As an assistant teacher in a two-teacher school.
CD: What subjects did you teach?
RD: I had first, second, and third grades. We had reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic,
largely.
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�CD: At that time, had the schools changed a lot from when you had been in grade school?
RD: The schools were about the same then that they were when I was in grade school, and
whatever methods I had were, to a great extent, borrowed from the teachers that I had gone to
in grade school.
CD: Where did you teach after you finished teaching there?
RD: I taught there for five years, but there were intervals that I didn’t teach. Once I went to a
camp near the close of the First World War. I didn’t teach that year. Then I went back and
taught a year. Then I went to school a whole year. And then I guess I went back and taught . All
together I taught five years there. And then I came from there to Todd, and I taught 17 years at
Todd.
Then I went to Jefferson and taught two years, then went to Lansing and taught four years. And
then I came back to Todd and taught enough to make 32 years in all at Todd. I went to Jefferson
thinking that I would be a teacher only, but it developed that I had to be the principal of a
school because the principal resigned to go into defense work before the school opened.
And I went to Lansing because they needed a principal. That was during World War II, and the
school personnel was scarce. Had to use teachers, oft times that were not really qualified, so far
as credits earned at school were concerned, to be teachers. Some of them did excellent work in
spite of that. Lansing was a large school, the largest in the county. It was a union school, had 12
grades, and between, as I recall, six or seven hundred.
CD: Did you teach as well as being principal?
RD: I taught some. As much as the county superintendent would permit me to teach. He had a
notion that there were a lot of other things that were important for a principal to do besides
teach. And I agreed that he was right.
I remember teaching American history and sociology in the Lansing School. I recall having had a
class of 9th grade math one year. I also had world history, sometimes. It seems to me now, as I
think back, that I had two or three periods of teaching a day. Various subjects during the four
years. I taught geography sometimes.
CD: Do you prefer teaching or being a principal?
RD: Well, I’m not sure how you answer that. I’d say yes, without hesitation if one could have
what he considered an efficient principal all the time. Its not always easy to teach if the
principal is unable or unwilling to establish procedures for the school to follow that make what
one considers a good school.
CD: Were there a lot of changes in the curriculum over the years that you taught?
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�RD: The curriculum expanded considerably during the years I taught. It was enlarged to include
many things that hadn’t been included before, and its been enlarged even since I’ve quit
teaching to include still other things. Now, I think the curriculum is perhaps the best it’s been.
I’m heartily in favor of things they’ve added wherein a child could learn by using his hands to do
things that he can use later in life as an occupation, whereby he could make a living. Carpentry
and bricklaying, plumbing and auto mechanics, and typing and bookkeeping: Things that will
function after the schooldays are over.
CD: Do you think that variety is important in a curriculum?
RD: Yes, indeed. I think that variety is very important. Now it’s to me quite noticeable that
there’s so much more for children to choose from than there used to be. When I worked in the
high school at Todd, I was principal there a couple of years, but mainly I worked in the high
school there for a number of years.
It was a small high school. We had few teachers, four, I guess, though it was accredited. And
that was the smallest number one could be accredited for, I guess. But we had what was called
a cut-and-dried curriculum. And whether you liked the subject or not, you must take it. If you
graduated from the school you had to have 16 units and you had to take all the courses offered
to get 16.
After a while, it got a little better. And now, is consolidated high schools (Todd High School
consolidated at Beaver Creek with Fleetwood and West Jefferson to make the Beaver Creek
High School), they have so much additional in the way of courses to offer that its quite
gratifying for e to know that a child doesn’t have to take world history if its meaningless to him.
And that he’s not obliged to take French if he has no interest or understanding of it, things like
that.
CD: How do you feel about certain required courses? Do you feel that some courses should be
required?
RD: I think I do. I would want a child to know something of the background of his country, and I
think for that reason American history is a must. Since we try to speak the English language,
even though we do it quite poorly, I think English is a must.
Of course, if you aim to write, you must know how to spell some. And if you aim to write, you
must know how to form your letters. So I think there are a number of courses that one would
say has to be required. But I’m quite happy that everything isn’t required; that a child has a
right to choose now from among many courses.
CD: Do you think math courses should be required?
RD: I don’t know how much math should be required. Math, like French, is somewhat of a
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�riddle to some people. They don’t seem to have an aptitude or interest for it. However, we
have to count to do any business. And one does need to know the basics.
CD: How have the qualifications for teaching changed over the years?
RD: Well, it’s unbelievable to one who hasn’t thought about it. When I began teaching,
qualifications were determined by the availability of somebody with some learning to work in
the school.
If they’d been high when I was a youngster, I think the schools would have had to remain
closed. Now they consider a person reasonably well qualified if he has a master’s degree. Some
counties a few years ago would hardly employ one who didn’t have a master’s degree. I think
maybe they’re not quite as strict on that in Watauga as they were 10 years or longer ago.
There are many positions now that one must have at least a master’s degree to fill and its
desirable to have a doctor’s degree. Watauga elected a superintendent the other day that I
used to teach over a Lansing. He has a doctor’s degree. I’ve been extremely proud of him
because o the progress he’s made in the acquiring the necessary understandings to be what I
hope will be an outstanding superintendent for Watauga. I think now that degree is generally
expected from anybody, certainly a beginning teacher.
There may be some still teaching who haven’t a degree who worked, raising their certificate
without earning a degree. But I don’t think there’s anyone beginning teaching now without a
degree. I don’t know that that’s so. You could find out.
CD: I doubt that you could. It’s hard enough to get jobs with degrees.
RD: Of course I’m speaking of those subjects that must have a learned background that’s
learned from books. There are people teaching bricklaying and carpentry, and those kindred
subjects like auto mechanics and things like that who don’t have degrees. They don’t have to
have them to teach those subjects.
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�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
In 1973, representatives from Appalachian State University (ASU) began the process of collecting interviews from Watauga, Avery, Ashe, and Caldwell county citizens to learn about their respective lives and gather stories. From the outset of the project, the interviewers knew that they were reaching out to the “last generation of Appalachian residents to reach maturity before the advent of radio, the last generation to maintain an oral tradition.” The goal was to create a wealth of data for historians, folklorists, musicians, sociologists, and anthropologists interested in the Appalachian Region.
The project was known as the “Appalachian Oral History Project” (AOHP), and developed in a consortium with Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College (now Hazard County Community College) both in Kentucky, Emory and Henry College in Virginia, and ASU. Predominately funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the four schools by 1977 had amassed approximately 3,000 interviews. Each institution had its own director and staff. Most of the interviewers were students.
Outgrowths of the project included the Mountain Memories newsletter that shared the stories collected, an advisory council, a Union Catalog, photographs collected, transcripts on microfilm, and the book Our Appalachia. Out of the 3,000 interviews between the three schools, only 663 transcripts were selected to be microfilmed. In 1978, two reels of microfilm were made available with 96 transcripts contributed by ASU.
An annotated index referred to as The Appalachian Oral History Project Union Catalog was created to accompany the microfilm. The catalog is broken down into five sections starting with a subject topic index such as Civilian Conservation Corps, Coal Camps, Churches, etc. The next four sections introduced the interviewees by respective school. There was an attempt to include basic biographic information such as date of birth, location, interviewer name, length of interview, and subjects discussed. However, this information was not always consistent per school.
This online project features clips from the interviews, complete transcripts, and photographs. The quality and consistency of the interviews vary due to the fact that they were done largely by students. Most of the photos are missing dates and identifying information.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1965-1989
Sound
A resource whose content is primarily intended to be rendered as audio.
Artist
Davis, Ron (interviewee)
Clausen, Donna (interviewer)
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:44, Bullpen ball game
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Ron Davis, July 5 1973
Description
An account of the resource
William Ron Davis was born in Todd, North Carolina on July 30, 1896, attended college at Appalachian Training School for Teachers (later became Appalachian State University) starting in 1917, then taught in Watauga and Ashe Counties for 32 years. He passed away on March 9, 1978 at the age of 81.
During his interview, Ron reflected on his rearing in rural Ashe County including his education, the rules to games they played as children, and discipline. He spent a considerable amount of time reflecting on education including his thoughts on how education has changed.
Creator
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Davis, Ron
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a title="Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/195" target="_blank">Appalachian Oral History Project Interviews, 1965-1989</a>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
5-Jul-73
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright for the interviews on the Appalachian State University Oral History Collection site is held by Appalachian State University. The interviews are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Appalachian State Collection 111. Appalachian Oral History Project Records, 1965-1989, W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC). Any commercial use of the materials, without the written permission of the Appalachian State University, is strictly prohibited.
Format
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MP3
Extent
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8 pages
Language
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English
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
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Todd (N.C)
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Ashe County (N.C.)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Davis, William Ron--Interviews
Appalachian Training School for Teachers (N.C.)
Teachers--North Carolina--Ashe County--Interviews
Teachers--North Carolina--Watauga County--Interviews
Appalachian State University
Ashe County
children games
discipline
Education
Elkville
Lansing
Todd
Watauga County N.C.