Little Schoolhouse on the Prairie

By SAM ALLIS/JORDAN

Imagine a public school where discipline is no problem. The kids work by themselves, help one another with problems and have a strong sense of community. There are no drugs, violence or bad language. Can such an institution exist in today's America?

It can, and it goes by the name of the Pine Grove Elementary School, a stark clapboard affair the size of a mobile home, some 40 miles of gravel road from Jordan, a hiccup of a town on the plains of eastern Montana. Pine Grove is one of 640 one-room public schoolhouses left in the U.S., a good example of a vanishing breed that occupies a hallowed place in American mythology. And the formula still works. Montana alone has more than 100 one-room schools in operation, and the state ranks third nationally in achievement tests.

But appearances are deceiving. The country school is no educational idyll, but the centerpiece of a complicated social arrangement and a daunting challenge for a lone teacher, who may have to juggle pupils in as many as nine grades with creativity and coherence. At Pine Grove, which has a total of nine students in eight grades, first-grader Becky Stanton meanders through a paragraph about American Indians while sixth-grader Nicole Phipps, sitting inches away, considers the difference between a kilometer and a hectometer. Their teacher, Elaine Savage, moves smoothly from one girl to the other. "They're growing corn and beans," Savage explains to Becky. And, in the next breath, to Nicole: "Move the decimal point over one place."

Beyond the kidney-shaped table that serves as Savage's cockpit in the 20-ft. by 60-ft. classroom, Cal Phipps, Nicole's eighth-grade cousin, reads about peristalsis for science. His younger brother Chad and fellow fourth-grader Chan Childers pursue phonics at their desks. Chan's second-grade sister Nolan wrestles solo with a spelling exercise, and Renee Stanton, Becky's seventh- grade sister, is engrossed in the Civil War for social studies.

The isolation of the one-room school leaves many students starved for greater contact with peers and more extracurricular activities. "I was bored out there," says Wendy Stanton, 15, who attended Pine Grove and now boards in Jordan as a high school freshman. "You miss your friends."

The curriculum at Pine Grove is as spare as the decor. There are no foreign- language classes or organized sports, virtually no music or art. Current events receive minimal classroom attention. Savage is the first to concede that she has not yet figured out how to operate the Apple computer that Ronnie Stanton, Wendy's father, donated to the school a few years back. But no . matter. "We want the basics, and it's working," says Stanton. "Our kids come out of the country school into the town high school way advanced. It's the one-on-one attention." This can cut both ways. Walter Lockie says he flunked math in his early high school years because his rural teacher for eight years was weak in that subject.

Teacher Savage, 64, often works seven days a week and sends home all missed math questions and spelling errors for parental inspection. Each weekend she prepares sheets for every child detailing the workbook pages to be completed on a daily basis for the next week. Because she must rely heavily on these telephone directory-size texts full of student exercises, she loses in spontaneity what she gains in regularity. But, she says flatly, "there is no other way I could do this job."

Are these kids living in a rustic time warp? Yes. Not far away from the Pine Grove schoolhouse sit two wooden outhouses and the old pickup Cal Phipps drives to school. He is only 13, but there is no school-bus service. Jordan -- nearby by Montana standards -- is the seat of Garfield County, 4,500 sq. mi., where the cattle outnumber the 1,600 humans and the flatlands are ribboned with cliffs called the Missouri Breaks. No one from Pine Grove in recent memory has ventured so far as Chicago for college, and Los Angeles might as well be Pluto.

Do the Pine Grove students know about Saddam Hussein, Milli Vanilli and crack? Not much. Do they care? No. "There's no great interest around here in going to New York City," says Don McDonald, 15, a sophomore at Garfield County High School in Jordan. Many graduates major in agriculture at two-year colleges around the Big Sky State and then return to family ranches if they have them. Otherwise they must look for work elsewhere.

The turnover among rural teachers is high. Pine Grove went through four in 1978 alone, including one man who was bothered by the presence of mice. The educators must endure Montana's brutal winters in isolation, usually in tiny quarters attached to their schoolhouses. Nor is there much excitement in town except the Hell Creek Bar. Salaries are low. Savage, a widowed 22-year veteran of six rural Montana schools, makes $14,000 annually after six years at Pine Grove. "You've got to love what you're doing," she says. Then she rings her brass school bell out the front door and tells Chad to raise the flag. It is time for school.