If we focus on the needs of all the children of all the people, regardless of the kind of need there is, that special education and gifted programs and the whole schmear, we can do better year after year, if we will.

[music playing] Learning is certainly a vital part of any youngster's life.

Education in the Ozarks has had a true champion for many years.

My guest today is the legendary Dr. Arthur Mallory, whose vision, passion, and leadership has left a positive and lasting impression on early childhood education.

Join us as we reminisce about education in the Ozarks then and now.

NARRATOR: Ozarks Public Television and Missouri State University are proud to present OzarksWatch Video Magazine, a locally produced program committed to increasing the understanding of the richness and complexity of Ozarks culture.

Visit our website for more information.

It's really good to have you along on another edition of OzarksWatch Video Magazine.

Hi, I'm Dale Moore and I'm really glad you're here with us today.

You know, as they say in the Ozarks back in the day, if you talked about education, you talked about two flavors.

You talked about, if you lived in town, going to an elementary school or a high school.

And if you lived in the country, well, you'd go to a one-room country schoolhouse.

I did that and we'll talk more about that later.

But times have changed and things have changed.

And what used to be simply reading and writing and arithmetic and maybe an occasional recess has turned into an entirely different kind of way of teaching today, particularly with early childhood education.

And I'm so delighted today to join a good friend of mine, someone who is-- I think of him as the godfather of education in the state of Missouri.

And that's Dr. Arthur Mallory.

Dr. Mallory, it is great to have you on the program today.

Thank you.

We've got a lot to talk about.

When you and I bumped into each the other day, we said just casually, you know, we ought to talk about early childhood education.

So I want to start at the earliest of childhood education.

I want to talk about your childhood education, first of all.

Where did you start school at?

Tell me about your early childhood education.

Well it starts with parents.

My dad and mother were both schoolteachers.

I'm a retired schoolteacher.

My wife's a retired schoolteacher.

I have three kids who are retired schoolteachers.

I guess that proves the point that if you can't do anything else, you can get a job teaching school or something like that.

My dad was a superintendent of schools.

He started as a one-room rural school teacher at 16 years of age back in 1923.

And he had 72 kids in a one-room rural school.

And my mother was a one-room rural school teacher.

The buildings where both of those, my parents taught are still there.

They're close to cemeteries.

They were the center of a community out in rural Missouri.

And in one of those cemeteries, I can check on my grandparents.

Their parents, their parents, their parents.

It's a great great great great grandparent all lined up.

Their name was Claxton.

And both my mother and my grandpa and his dad taught in that little building over there, in the brush right now.

You have to duck to go and get in the front door.

But the building's still standing.

It's still standing.

Yeah.

We were there the other day.

We did a run to the cemeteries.

And where my dad was teaching, it was called the Nation School.

The cemetery is over here.

I have some family buried there.

And that school is up here.

My parents were focused on education.

And when I was a little kid, they took a major role in my education.

I was coming out of a building in Clayton, Missouri several years ago, many years ago.

And there was a TV set up outside and they wanted to ask me a question.

They said, well, Mr. Mallory, can you describe a great educational system.

And I said, sure.

And they said, well, OK, do it.

Then I said, well, it has maybe three prongs.

Number one is access.

And access is the responsibility of the Board of Education, the taxpayers of the district.

That means a good place to go to school, a safe building, good teachers, a good safe drive on a bus if you need to ride a bus.

That's access.

These are the people who provide the stuff that's necessary for you to do your education.

The second important thing is a supportive family.

And unless that family is a supportive family, supporting the teachers, supporting the school, supporting the child, and seeing to it that the child behaves before they get to school, and seeing to it that they get their lessons and so forth, a supportive family.

But the most important ingredient is a willing learner.

And I don't know what you do with a 14-year-old, young person who chooses not to learn.

And we have such things in this society.

I got that idea of those prongs from my early learning with my family.

And they were supportive families, so they saw to it that my sister and I were ready to go to school, enjoyed the school, felt good about it, had a good attitude, and they got us-- they were focused on school and there were much involved in our education.

When I started school, I said we lived west of Mount Vernon, now, rock throwing distance from Albatross or Plew, out that direction.

And it was called Center School was the name of the school.

And it was in between Miller and Mount Vernon and Stotts City, kind of out in that area.

And there were seven rows in that school.

And I was in the first grade and I was the only first grader.

So I was the librarian for the first grade.

I was the recess monitor.

I had all-- I mean, I had leadership skills from the very beginning.

And then all the other students would be in the adjoining rows there.

And I remember at that age not being a very bright boy, that poor Mrs. Clapp has got her hands full.

And you think about classroom management in the early days.

And here's a teacher who is teaching.

And it seems like my recollection was that some of the older students and the other would help and kind of be almost like teacher's aides.

Is that your experience?

Yes.

And I didn't go to a one-room rural school, but I went to a small schools.

And when I was in the first grade, the first graders were in these two rows here, the second graders here, third graders here.

And we had a teacher who taught all three.

And think about this, Dale.

What you had in that building where you were, you had some pretty up to date ideas that were floating around.

Number one, you had open classroom.

You had cross age tutoring.

The older students were over here and they could help the young students.

And a good teacher would see to it that everybody got involved in the learning for every grade level.

My dad, though, said that there were some real smart girls.

It was 11 miles to a high school.

No transportation.

Back in his day.

And so the girls would, after they graduated from the eighth grade, some of them would just keep coming to school for another couple of years.

And they were of great value to the 16-year-old boy who was the schoolteacher.

But good learning could take place.

I've had people come to see me and say, well, what do we need to be thinking about to get a good education?

And I said-- I've said to them, you can get a good education wherever you are if you choose to.

If the family chooses for their child to have a good education.

The family is the focal point.

And they're the ones who developed the attitude and develop the work ethic, the study ethic for their family and for their children.

It's important.

When you came to SMS as the president-- of course, SMS, MSU has always been known as the teacher's school, the teacher's college.

Do you recollect when the board hired you, did they give you any specific direction on how they wanted you to take the college at that time with respect to education, or what your focus was in the early days?

I don't recall a conversation just like that with the board.

I had two interviews.

I didn't apply for the job.

There were some people who applied, but I did not.

But we had a couple of interviews, so they hired me.

But it was just second nature for me to be interested in the College of Education, which was just the Department of Education at that time.

And when I graduated from SMS in 1954, we had around 1,200 students.

And I didn't know every name, but I knew where everybody belonged on the campus.

Because you saw them every day, and we had 38 acres.

And when I came to work here, we had about 2,700.

And then when I left, we had about 11 and 1/2, 11,500.

We were the fastest growing state college or university in the nation percentage wise at that time.

And the transportation was good between Kansas City and Saint Louis.

And families were willing for their kids to get this far away from home but not much farther.

But they could come within 2 and 1/2 hours and they could check on their kids.

And it was a nice campus.

And we had good we had good teacher education, and they still have.

Was Harry Wise, was the dean then?

DR. ARTHUR MALLORY: He was one of my-- he was one of the best professors I've ever had.

I've heard great stories about Dr.

Wise-- He was good.

He was good.

--and what he did.

So when you got here and you got busy and got started with doing what you were doing, did you have an interest then in early childhood education?

Because that's kind of a passion of yours, is the early childhood.

I've had a keen interest in it.

Why is that?

Pardon?

Why is that?

Why have you-- why that specifically?

Well, you know, Dale, I'm a dad.

And we had four children.

And I knew that by the time we got those kids in the public schools, much of what they were going to need, they had already gotten or had failed to get in the home.

And I read a book by Dr. Burton White, a psychology professor from Harvard, entitled The First Three Years Of Life.

And I read it.

And then he was speaking in St. Louis.

And so I drove to Saint Louis to hear what he had to say.

And I knew he was right.

And he was saying that by the time a child is three years of age, and he'd done a lot of research, by the time a child is three, four years of age, much of what they need has already been put there.

Think of the things that the child has already learned or not learned.

Being obedient to the constituted authority, to learn to stand in line without pushing, being kind.

And that's the family teaches that.

Having a work ethic.

Now, they don't know that it's a work ethic, but that's there.

And by the time the teacher gets that child in first grade, much of the important stuff has already been done, has already been learned and acquired or not.

So I cast it-- I thought about what should we do.

And early childhood education actually began in the home economics classrooms, because that's where they had family stuff and so forth.

But we didn't have a college or a university anywhere who was teaching somebody how to do early childhood education.

So I asked one of my colleagues, PJ Newell, who was a vice-- who was the Assistant Commissioner for Instruction, where is the best kindergarten in the state?

Now, by the time when I came to Jefferson City as Commissioner of Education, most schools didn't have a kindergarten.

Springfield didn't have a kindergarten.

There was no kindergarten in Springfield.

There were kindergartens in Metropolitan area of Saint Louis and Kansas City.

But out in the areas, the rural areas, there was just really no kindergarten.

And so we-- in fact, I called Willard Graff, who was the superintendent of schools in Springfield, and an excellent superintendent.

And I said, you'll need to have a kindergarten next year or we'll have to adjust your rating.

And he said, oh, I'll have a kindergarten.

And I think he was waiting for somebody from Jefferson City to call him and say, spend a little money and get a kindergarten going.

But kindergarten was not universal.

And that was in 1971.

So what we decided to do is I hired Mildred Winter from Ferguson-Florissant School District in St. Louis County.

And she was a creative person and I said, I want you to get around this.

Stir around and see what we should be doing with children under kindergarten age.

She did.

And we started doing some things with what is now called early childhood education.

And that's where the parents as teachers program came from.

That discussion-- You really started the parents as teachers-- We started it back, and it took about 13 years to get the General Assembly to agree to fund parents as teachers.

DALE MOORE: Wow.

And in contrast to that, in 1973, we decided we needed special education in the schools, and special education was not something that schools did much about back in those days.

And people can hardly believe that.

I said something to that effect the other day with some people, and they just couldn't believe that hasn't always been the case, but there's a starting point for everything.

And special education got through the General Assembly we got a bill through the General Assembly, and one session of the General Assembly without a dissenting vote and with some money.

Now, could you get anything through the legislature today without a-- you know?

I don't know if we could get anything anyway.

We got early childhood education going.

And it's important.

The Springfield Public Schools does a great job with their parents as teachers program.

They put more money in it than they have from the state.

They give some more from the local school district's funds.

And they do a great job with early childhood education and with parents as teachers.

It's required in the state of Missouri to offer parents as teachers by law.

The family can decide whether or not to do it, but it's very wise.

DALE MOORE: Is there a curriculum involved with that parents as teachers program, a curriculum that the teachers-- DR. ARTHUR MALLORY: Oh yeah.

Dale, we have several books that have been created over these years.

It's 30 some years that we've been going with that.

And it's a great curriculum.

And Missouri started the program.

Has any other states latched on to this idea?

We have it in all 50 states.

DALE MOORE: Wow.

And we have it in seven or eight foreign countries.

DALE MOORE: Wow.

What are the biggest challenges facing early childhood education today, do you think?

And you can be candid.

What do you think the biggest challenges are?

Well, we still have some people who are skeptical about taking the child a little early and doing something.

And they're maybe afraid that somebody is going to indoctrinate their child and so forth.

My dad one time said when I was a little guy, and I remember him saying that.

He said, I don't intend for the teacher or the preacher to have more influence over my child than I have.

Now, that was OK with us because he and mother were good at it.

And they were kind, they were loving and so forth.

Not every family takes that much interest in the educational end.

The spiritual end is a family thing.

The educational end is a family thing.

And not every family takes that kind of interest.

But if every family would do what is needed to do to get that child ready to go to school, wanting to go to school, feeling that the teacher is important, loving the process, we'd have better education.

On more than one occasion, I've said that out loud.

I wish I had paid more attention to miss Underwood's fifth grade math class.

But that's the hindsight looking back in the rearview mirror.

Budgets are tough right now, and that's just the way of it.

It seems like education has always had to kind of scratch and claw to get what it needs to get to do its job.

DR. ARTHUR MALLORY: and We're always having to decide on the priorities.

And from my perspective, if the school district will prioritize early childhood and primary work, that's a great priority.

That's more important than some other things that we do.

I know here at the university now, there's a wonderful early childhood development program here.

What are the great successes coming out of that program?

What are the things that make you most proud of?

Well, the fact is when I retired, we moved back to Springfield.

Again.

A long time ago.

And we had a mayor's commission, a mayor's committee on children.

And I was on that panel.

And a few years after that panel started, Lloyd Young, professor Lloyd Young, a professor here-- DALE MOORE: I remember Lloyd.

--was a chair of a committee.

And we were doing-- we were trying to prove the point, does it really make a difference if a person has had parents as teachers.

Or does it make no difference at all.

And so the best place to do research on something like that is to go to the kindergarten teachers who are going to get those children who've been in the parents as teachers program.

And we learned from them, and it's good research.

We learned from them that the children who had been in the parents as teachers program were better prepared to be in kindergarten.

They were more productive.

They could do more with them in the learning process than those who had not been in the program.

We have a-- Joanne and I have 13 great grandchildren.

And our oldest grandson and his wife are both professors of music.

They both had their doctorates in music and they're teaching in the St. Louis area.

So the first great grandchild came along.

And I said to Jason, my grandson, we need to get Teddy in the parents as teachers program here in the Kirkwood School District in St. Louis County.

Well, he said, grandpa, we've read the books.

Lesley and I have read the books and we don't-- we may not need to do that.

And I said, favor me.

Just do me a favor and put Teddy in that.

And so this mature person who came to visit and to talk to them about raising Teddy and some things to do to get him well prepared to go on and learn.

They couldn't believe how much help they got from that person.

And here were two smart kids who got smarter with this mature person who had been a teacher.

And she was doing parents as teachers work.

And Teddy and then Evie, his little sister, have thrived as a result of that contact with somebody who could provide assistance to parents to make them the best teachers they can possibly be.

I want to ask you, I've always wondered-- I've wondered this.

And it's not a controversial thing, I don't think, by any means.

But since we're talking about early childhood education, home schooling has become quite a concept.

And the reasons people do that, we don't need to get into that, because they're personal typically.

Maybe religious, maybe political.

But the home schooling environment, is early childhood education nurtured as part of the home schooling process?

Because it's happening at home.

Is that the idea of-- Well, home schooling has improved dramatically over the years.

Back when I was in Jefferson City, the General Assembly was-- there was a bill in the General Assembly to make the home schooling program, put them under the State Board of Education and so forth.

And I fought that legislation.

And in fact, one of the finest legislators in my experience was in St. Louis County, and she was pushing that legislation.

And I told Kay that you just really don't want to do it.

You don't want me in charge of home schooling.

Now, that's contradictory.

But home schooling has vastly improved over the years.

And part of it is because those who do the home schooling have cooperated with one another and they have coordinated several things.

And the education is a state function.

It's a federal interest.

But it's a local responsibility.

And that local board is responsible for the decisions, the local decisions that need to be made at the local level.

But it's a family responsibility as well.

Now, the Constitution gives the state the authority and the responsibility to see to it that public education is provided.

But the family is really that center.

And if the family who has an interest and a love for their children will do what it's supposed to do, and the school does a good job with its program, and it will and it can and it should, then things can happen.

And I think if we focus on the needs of all the children of all the people, regardless of the kind of need there is, that special education and gifted programs and everything, the whole schmear, we can do better year after year if we will.

Looking down the road-- we've only got a minute left or so-- but as you look down the road, one of the conversations today is a four-day school week.

As an educator, where do you come down on that?

Well, you know I'm a traditionalist.

And I think I, again, if all the three prongs, the school, the family, and the kid will all be involved, and we'll do the best we possibly can, four days probably will work out.

What troubles me about the argument that I hear is that it's intended as a recruitment tool to get teachers.

And it seems to me if we're having trouble getting teachers, we need to find out a different cause of the problem than simply saying, here, let's-- I don't know.

That's just me talking.

You know, the fact of the matter is, and in my experience, and I've known a lot of teachers, and I have a lot of teachers in my family, teaching as a ministry.

It's something more than a job.

Most people don't go into teaching to make a lot of money.

They go into teaching because of something.

What it is that-- and the person comes out of teaching fulfilled having done some great things for the children and the youth of the nation.

Yeah, I agree.

I've been 35 years in the classroom myself now.

And what I always tell my department head and my dean or whoever is I love this job so much I'd almost do it for free.

But now, wait a minute, I'm just kidding.

And I think many teachers feel that way.

And a teacher needs to feel that way, because it's not an easy job.

Just think about the elementary school teacher.

They have those 30 kids or whatever they have.

It ought to be 16, 17.

There's some pretty good research on the numbers.

But they have those kids six hours a day, five days a week, 170 some days per year, and for 13 years.

And that teacher, and that elementary teacher doesn't sit down very much during the day.

They work all day long.

It's not an easy job.

It is not.

It is not.

It has been a delight.

Thank you so much for spending 30 minutes here and reminiscing.

I've enjoyed every minute of it Thank you.

DALE MOORE: Thank you, Dr. Mallory.

You stay tuned.

I'll be right back.

NARRATOR: Ozarks Public television and Missouri State University are proud to present OzarksWatch Video Magazine, a locally produced program committed to increasing the understanding of the richness and complexity of Ozarks culture.

Visit our website for more information.

The future of early childhood education is in good hands, thanks in large part to the lifelong work and passion of Dr. Arthur Mallory.

I want to extend my thanks to him for all he's done and continues to do for youngsters all across the Ozarks.

And you join us again real soon for another OzarksWatch Video Magazine.

[music playing]