By Patricia Mahaffey
Enquirer contributor

INDIAN HILL - Fourth-graders from St. Gertrude, Cincinnati Country Day and Indian Hill School took a field trip into the 1870s this semester, stepping out of their buses and into Indian Hill's "Little Red Schoolhouse."

The one-room building housed Indian Hill schoolchildren ages 6-18 from 1874 until 1940.

Today's students - bearing temporary new names such as Temperance, Sophie, Alphonse, or Rufus - spent the morning learning just as students did over a hundred years ago. As they file into the plain, sparsely furnished room, one of the first things that caught their attention was the whipping post in the entryway.

"I thought it was interesting about the punishment," said Indian Hill School fourth-grader Arjun Jandal. "I wouldn't want to be in school back then because they could whip you when you got in trouble! Now, we just get detention, or a warning, but then, you got punished straightaway."

"They think that's really amazing," said Indian Hill fourth-grade teacher Sara Jones. "This is where they would have actually gone to school, so it really makes a connection for them. The whole experience brings what we study about Ohio history alive."

Common disciplinary methods such as the willow switch and the whipping post were only discussed, but everything else was hands-on.

Students used slate and chalk to figure out problems that any farm child could relate to - number of hay bushels or cords of wood needed for the winter, or how much time is needed to walk to a downtown Cincinnati market.

They recited from McGuffey Readers, America's standard reading texts during the 1800s. Published in Cincinnati, the series had a profound influence on American literary tastes. Rev. William McGuffey authored and compiled the contents - which revolve around rural life and character values - while a moral philosophy professor at Miami University in Oxford.

A favorite activity was dipping pens in inkwells to practice "Spencerian" penmanship, the flourished, elegant style standard back then.