Higher Education as I Experienced It

by John C. Reimer

This is the third of three articles published from materials in the John C. Reimer personal papers. Mr. Reimer passed away in 1990. His papers were shared with HP by son Arnold, who is doing research on a biography of his father. The comments come from an interview given by John to David K. Schellenberg at a 175^th anniversary celebration of the Kleinegemeinde held in Steinbach in 1987. David had asked: In a time when higher education was frowned on, how did you manage to go to school to get this higher education?

I grew up on a farm until I was the age of 21, which was the legal age to go on one's own at the time. I had not learned a trade so when I began to work for myself, I helped in my uncle's store as clerk. But I planned to be a school teacher.

All the education we had was from a private school, and a number of evening classes in the Steinbach high school. In the private school we got as far as decimals in arithmetic. We had a text for geography, and a grammar for the German language. We read from an English reader, and translated from English into German and German into English. However, we never spoke the language.

After about a year in the store, I got a position as school teacher in the Blumenhof school. I was there for two years and then became a teacher in the Steinbach (private) school. That was the last year of the private school in Steinbach (i.e. around 1920 - ed.). As it turned out the second teacher in the school could not stay for the whole term, so I took over. That is how I came to be the last teacher in the private school. As far as I know I am the only teacher still living in both East and West Reserve, who taught in a private school.

When the government took over the schools, the public was divided: one group favoured the new public schools, and the other preferred the private school. The groups objected to each other to quite an extent sometimes. I could tell many stories about that, but we don't have the time.

The Department (of Education) did not have enough teachers to supply the schools, so they hired students from the high school and gave them permits to teach. The Department preferred these students who had been teachers in the private school because they had experience in teaching.

We students organized our own summer schools to improve our education. We went to the Department, hired a professor, and paid him and did it all by ourselves. Most of the summer schools were in the educational Institute near Altona (Mennonite Educational Institute in Altona (?) - ed.). One year it was in Steinbach and one year I took a course at the University of Manitoba.

I was married at twenty-five and got all my high school education after that. Up to then the Department accepted Grade 11s into the Normal School, or Teacher's College, as it is now. But the plans were to make it Grade 12 that they would accept, so I took Grade 12. In that case the church saw that higher education would be necessary if they wanted to have teachers from their own group. But it was a hard problem for them to change their minds.

I saw the need in the church, and still wanted to become a teacher. But I knew that they saw a danger in higher education and objected to it. I felt I had to tell the authorities of the church of my plans, so one Sunday morning I went into the church office where the teachers (ministers ? - ed.), were sitting before the service began, and told them about my plan. I heard no reply and did not expect one either. So the church saw that if they wanted to have teachers from their own church, they would have to change to higher education and they did.

What a change it was! At first our forefathers saw a danger in higher education and objected to it. Now we encourage higher education and go on and on. We, the church, raise our graduates above all the others and give them a special supper. What is our aim in that?