A QUICK REVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF SCHOOLS IN CAPE GIRARDEAU COUNTY PROVIDES SOME INTERESTING INSIGHTS

"The American high school is really a product of the spirit of democracy. The grammar school and academy were "old world" institutions and were aristocratic in organization and curriculum. The people wanted a share in the control of education. Consequently, the high school was organized by them, this organization being vested directly in a board which is responsible to the people." (Claude A. Phillips, "A History of Education in Missouri," 1911, p. 55)"West of the Mississippi River" is an area too large for consideration here. The first public education in Cape Girardeau County was the elementary school organized by School Township No. 1 in 1843. (See the School Townships book in the archives of Cape Girardeau County. School Township No. 1 is Congressional Township 32 north, Range 13 east, Fruitland and its environs, more to the east than to the west.) "The first high school in the state was organized in St. Louis in the winter of 1852-53. It was located in the old Benton School. ... The policy of requiring a rigid examination of the pupils from the elementary school was continued till the superintendency of Dr. Soldan." (Phillips, p. 63.

The first public secondary school in Cape Girardeau County was the Pleasant Hill Academy organized by the trustees of School Township No. 1 on Feb. 26, 1853, transforming an earlier private academy into a public academy. The compilers of "Goodspeed's History of Southeast Missouri," 1888, failed to note the transformation. They believed the "very flourishing school" with a "wide reputation for its excellence" (p. 569) was a private academy, a church school.

The Civil War came on, and the academy building became a stable for the horses of the Union Home Guard. But the spirit of aristocracy dies hard. One of the first secondary schools organized in Cape Girardeau County after the Civil War was "the Fruitland Normal Institute ... opened Sept. 1, 1869, in the Pleasant HIll Academy building. ... The principal of the institute was Professor J.H. Kerr, then county superintendent in Cape Girardeau County. Mr. Kerr was a graduate of Yale College and had established a very fine reputation for scholarship and culture in Southeast Missouri." (Phillips, pp. 98-99.

Kerr was an important educational reformer in Missouri during Reconstruction. He was committed to the cause of public education. He established his institute to train teachers for the public schools. But the secondary school in School Township No. 1 after the Civil War was a "private normal." (William E. Parrish, "MIssouri Under Radical Rule 1865-70, 1965, p. 98.

In 1874, the Oak Ridge High school was organized. Oak Ridge was not "the first organized public high school west of the Mississippi." To be specific, Oak Ridge was the first public high school (high school, that is, not an academy) in north Cape Girardeau County. And that is not Fruitland rain on Oak Ridge's pararde. The parade remembered a time when Oak Ridge replaced Fruitland as a leader in public education in Cape Girardeau County, a time when the people of the district made the right decisions -- public instead of private, high school instead of academy, democracy instead of aristocracy -- and looked forward in hope to what the high school has been for 125 years."It's just a small-town school, and I just like it," Chester Seyer said. It is a small-town school which has made, through more than half of our nation's history, a wonderful contribution to the life and spirit of democracy west of the Mississippi River.

Gary McDowell of Jackson is a retired economics historian.