Old schoolhouse rocks

On a recent weekday, dozens of children sit up straight as boards, on hard wooden benches, as a schoolmarm hits her open palm with a hickory stick.

In the 19th century, “if you got a rapping at school, your parents found out and you got a whupping at home,” she says, her voice as sharp as her boot heels.

Jaws drop. Backs stiffen.

In the 19th century, schoolmarm Stephanie Runckles continues, “discipline was not a problem.”

It’s not a problem here, either, where children flock to learn, listen and endure long-abandoned disciplinary actions with the pride of teacher’s pets. Titled “School’s In/School’s Out,” this one-room schoolhouse re-creation -- held for one hour every summer Thursday in conjunction with the exhibit “American ABC: Childhood in 19th-Century America” -- has been the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s surprise hit of the season.

“I just thought people would go ... ‘Oh, how quaint,’ ” says the exhibit’s curator, Claire Perry, who conceived of the schoolhouse and first showed it in the spring at Stanford University’s Cantor Arts Center. “I scratched my head and thought, ‘What impulse is it that’s drawing people to this?’ ”

Attending class on a typical Thursday are 7-year-old history buffs who ask questions about Laura Ingalls Wilder, 6-year-olds who own American Girl dolls modeled after historical girls, and 5-year-olds fascinated by the odd lady in the poufy dress who waves a commanding stick like a stern Pied Piper.

The schoolhouse wasn’t what the curators first planned. The initial idea was an interactive exhibit with computers and kiosks -- the usual bells, whistles and drop-down menus often used to appeal to 21st century students.

But “there’s something cold about computer screens,” Perry says.

So, says American Art Museum Director Elizabeth Broun, “we stepped back and thought: ‘What are we thinking? We’re in the 19th century -- let’s keep it to their methods.’ ”

They gave up on 21st century pizazz. It was time to go old school. Literally.

A vital step was finding just the right schoolmarm. Runckles, a history buff who home-schooled her own now-grown children, works during the school year at the one-room Seneca Schoolhouse Museum in Poolesville, Md. There she imitates teacher Emma Darby, who taught at Seneca after her husband died in the Civil War, and Smithsonian curators were “quite impressed” with her, public programs manager Nona Martin says.

Early every Thursday, the schoolmarm set the stage for the lessons at “School’s In/School’s Out.” (The final session was held last week.)

“Today,” she begins, “we are going back in time to Aug. 10, 1873.”

Runckles tells of the food children would have carried -- meager lunches in “lard pails.” The saddest tales? Peanut butter had not yet been invented. A banana? Ha. Chocolate? If you’re lucky. Are you slouching, over there in the second row?

Because it is in an art museum, the room was designed not after an actual schoolhouse but after the nostalgic Winslow Homer painting “Country School,” from 1873. (For a nationalistic subject that would please his older patrons, Homer painted not the typical one-room schoolhouse of the 1870s but rather a version from decades earlier. Even when first unveiled, the rosy oil was viewed as a sappy ode.)

At the head of the room stands an American flag, a blackboard chalked with math problems and a teacher’s desk burdened with grade-school primers, a basket of slates and a shiny red apple, here cast of wax.

Near a display of 19th century artwork from the museum’s collection, designers installed a makeshift cloakroom -- a simple row of hooks hung with period garb. Within days of the exhibit’s opening, kids were jockeying so much for the petticoats and corsets that the museum assigned an intern, Jaquetta Ransom, to work the station. “It gets hectic sometimes,” she says, lacing a 4-year-old into a corset.

The students also want to do the teacher’s math problems on their own slates. “I like that math was called arithmetic,” says Tytiana Ashley Christmas, a third-grader visiting from New York. But “I wouldn’t like the dresses. It feels uncomfortable and there’s the stress of putting it on every day. You’d have to wake up at 3 in the morning.”

Soon, the classroom is filled with more firmly delivered lessons: “It was considered immodest for girls to show their arms,” Runckles says to a row of girls wearing tank tops.

Then, gesturing toward a waiting stool, the schoolmarm asks, “Would someone like to demonstrate the dunce cap?”

Chaim Shotkin of Ottawa, a 9-year-old ball of energy, leaps to his feet and pleads to be chosen.

The schoolmarm chides him for speaking out of turn, then allows him to solemnly stride to the front. There, he dons the cone-shaped cap and does something he wouldn’t have been permitted to do in 1873. Smile.