Charles Lau

Ozaukee County News Articles

A PIONEER EDUCATOR OF OZAUKEE COUNTY

by Theodore A. Boerner

Extracted from the
The Wisconsin magazine of history:
Volume 11, number 2, December 1927
Used with permission of Wisconsin Historial Society
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org

It has been said that "a prophet hath no honorin his own country." That the truth of this saying is made more evident by anoccasional exception was shown by an unusual celebration in the city of Cedarburgabout twenty-two years ago, when Charles Lau, principal of the Cedarburg schoolsfor more than thirty years, was the honored guest of the community, assembled in the Turner Hall to rejoice with him on the completion of his fiftieth year of activeservice as a teacher in the schools of Wisconsin. It was a well deserved recognitionof a life devoted from its very beginning to the cause of education.

Charles Lau was born September 22, 1836, in Brunn, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Germany,the son of Johann Lau, teacher of the Dorf-Schule at Brunn. His education was begunin his father's school, with instruction in reading, writing, arithmetic, and Latin.It is interesting to note that reading in this school was taught by the phoneticmethod, Lautier Methode> of which Mr. Lau ever remained a consistent advocate.From Brunn he graduated to the Stadt-Schide in Brandenburg, where the course waslargely classical, with instruction in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. The final preparationfor his life work came in a district school near Cedar Lake, Washington County, Wisconsin,taught by Dr. Wendell, which Mr. Lau attended primarily for the purpose of learningthe English language. The next winter found him teacher of this same school for aterm of three months at a salary of twenty-two dollars a month.

Charles Lau was eighteen years of age when in 1854 the whole family, father, mother,four boys, and two girls, emigrated to America. The trip was made on an Americansailing vessel, six weeks being spent on the ocean. The captain, however, pronouncedit his most delightful trip because of the Lau family, who, having organized as amixed chorus, lightened the passage with song. Arrived in America, the family settledon the southeast shore of Cedar Lake in Washington County, Wisconsin, their firstAmerican home being a rude windowless and floorless log house. And from this humbleabode Mr. Lau started out on his career as teacher. The chronological record of thatcareer is brief: from 1855 to 1856 in the district school near Cedar Lake; 1856 to1859 in Granville, Milwaukee County; 1859 to 1874 in Mequon and Thiensville, Ozaukee County; 1874 to 1909 in Cedarburg, Ozaukee County. That makes fifty years in Ozaukee County. And the quality as well as the length of his service justly gave to Mr. Laua commanding place in the educational affairs of the county.

"By their fruits ye shall know them/' When Mr. Lau began to teach at Cedarburgthe school was housed in a two-room building. When death ended his labors in 1909two fine structures graced the school grounds, a fully equipped graded school ofeight rooms and a high school building of equal size. From the first it was his aimto raise the standard of his school, and it was not many years before he had a highschool in operation which attracted students from all parts of the county. But evenbefore the high school was established Mr. Lau found time to give instruction inhigher than graded school branches, to such good purpose that his pupils had no difficultyin passing the entrance examinations of the University of Wisconsin. The work ofthe whole school, however, from the kindergarten to the high school, always receivedMr. Lau's closest attention. It was, in fact, in the lower grades that he achievedhis most notable results, for he worked on the principle that a higher educationis of little value unless it is well grounded.

Perhaps the character and quality of Mr. Lau as a teacher is best revealed in themanuscript of one of his addresses now in the possession of the writer. It is writtenin that clear, perfect script which all his pupils will remember as a peculiar characteristicof Mr. Lau. A firm hand, every letter perfectly formed, every word properly spacedso that "he who runs may read"–in these days when fine handwriting seems,alas, to have become a lost art, it is really delightfully restful to pore over soperfect a manuscript. The sight of this old paper reminds the writer of those ancientfundamentals of a good education on which Mr. Lau always laid peculiar stress: reading,writing, and arithmetic. The range of modern scholarship sends us so far afield thatthe importance of these ancient fundamentals is sometimes lost to sight, and youngmen and women are launched into higher courses before they have learned how to read,write, and figure. But Mr. Lau believed in building well at the foundation, and itwas his constant aim to see that his pupils were well grounded in these fundamentalsubjects before they ventured on higher flights.

The writer, who attended the Cedarburg school when Charles Lau began his work there,would be glad if possible to describe in detail that educator's method of teaching.But the lapse of fifty years of busy life in other lines has somewhat dimmed thepicture. However, a letter received from Mr. Lau's youngest son ( John Arnold Lau,formerly principal of Rock Island High School, Illinois, and now a publisher of schoolbooksin Chicago) throws some light on the subject. "Strange as it may seem,"he writes, "I find myself somewhat at a loss to put a finger on the essenceof father's teaching method. The only advice he gave me when I began teaching was:'Never go before your class unprepared.' After I got to teaching, we seldom, if ever,discussed methods. While he was my teacher, I was at the age where anything likeserious thought about methods was rather taboo; it simply did not occur. I was interestedin subject matter; I took methods for granted–did not think about them. This I know,that when father first began to teach the older boys high school subjects like physics,botany, and geometry, he did so by the laboratory method. This was not original,but somewhat new for an ordinary schoolmaster. Instruction in those days, as yourecall, was largely academic; that is, from the book. Father either rigged up orbought apparatus, and insisted on experiment in physics. Botany was a study of actualspecimens. Geometry was a process of understanding and thinking in terms of lines,angles, and planes, rather than swallowing whole the demonstration and glibly sayingamen, with the usual 'Q. E. D.' I think I got my insistence on knowing how and whyin history from an unremembered training in father's classes, in which he evidentlywanted us to know about the relations between events, periods, and persons. In brief,father was strong for 'thinking through'–self activity (nothing new since Socrates,but he did pioneer in self-reliance in thinking). I think that was what helped mostof his students at the University later. Of course, thoroughness was a fetish–thoroughnessin fundamentals." Another student (Hugo Krause, of Chicago) briefly states thegeneral verdict: "What we learned from him we learned well."

Mr. Lau's success in his work at Cedarburg soon attracted the favorable attentionof educators from all parts of the state, and his services were in frequent demandat teachers' institutes and meetings. He was probably one of the earliest exponentsin Wisconsin of the Pestalozzian idea of teaching, involving the three principlesthat "education must develop the child as a whole, education must guide andstimulate his activities, and all education must be based on intuition and exercise."There is no doubt that in his many years of demonstrating these principles Mr. Laumade a profound impression on the educational practice of the state. Certain it isthat all who came in contact with him could feel that he was thoroughly in earnest,that his work was guided by a rare singleness of purpose, and that his whole lifein fact expressed an intense devotion to the public school as America's most preciousinstitution.

The school was indeed Mr. Lau's life. Quoting from the address above referred to,which was delivered on Decoration Day: "The question before us," he said,"is, are our public schools doing all that we have a right to demand of themto prepare our young people to become patriotic, intelligent, moral, and industriouscitizens? Our public school system must have life in itself; no dead forms will suffice.It must be American in its deepest significance, liberty loving, liberty promoting.As a friend of true liberty it must encourage industry and sobriety; it must inculcatelove of order and respect for law; it must impress upon its pupils the responsibilityof office-holding with more patriotic and less selfish ends in view; it must teachthe sacredness of the ballot-box, the emblem of a freeman's power and the pledgeof a freeman's honor; it must graft upon the minds of its pupils the value of Americancitizenship. But above all the public school must emphasize character. This is buta recurrence to the principles of our fathers. To the promotion of character ourschools must address themselves, or all our boasted liberties will become unbridledlicense, and our property and lives be at the mercy of the incendiary and the bomb-thrower."

Striving after these ideals, Mr. Lau lived and worked. How well he succeeded is shownin the hundreds of lives that in the course of half a century of teaching had felthis guiding hand, as well as in the high esteem in which he was held in the communitywhich he directly served. For he was a part of the life of the town and made hisgood influence felt in many ways outside of his regular school work. But in the heartsof his pupils, many of whom are now grayheaded men and women, he holds a place whichnothing can shake. With particular pleasure and appreciation they will recall withwhat patience and self-denial Mr. Lau organized a school choir and labored nightafter night to teach them to sing; how he drilled them in the periodic school playsand carried on his devoted shoulders the burden of director, stage manager, prompter,and what not besides; how he guided them in the reading of good books and led theminto a knowledge of the classics in two languages; how with the utmost gentlenessand consideration he smoothed out the occasional troubles and strifes of his youngcharges; how he took a deep and fatherly interest in their aims and ambitions; howhe shared in their sports and on one memorable occasion batted out a home run–preciousrecollections! No wonder that as time went on he was feelingly and lovingly rememberedby his former pupils as "Papa Lau."

It is unfortunate that the records and documents accumulated by Mr. Lau are no longeravailable. Most of these were lost in a fire which destroyed the old high schoolbuilding at Cedarburg. Only a few documents remain, several of which may howeverbe of historical interest. One of these is an Ozaukee County teacher's certificateissued to Mr. Lau in 1864 by Superintendent Frederick W. Horn, once a considerablefigure in the political life of Wisconsin. Another is a state teacher's certificateissued in 1871 by State Superintendent Samuel Fallows of beloved memory. But perhapsthe most interesting document is a teacher's contract of 1862 with School DistrictNo. 14 of Mequon, in which it is agreed that the salary of twenty-five dollars amonth shall be paid "whenever there is money in the treasury!"

Mr. Lau remained active in the Cedarburg schools until within a few months of hisdeath, which occurred July 10, 1909. Quoting from the Cedarburg Neivs, "ProfessorLau was a modest but energetic man who never sought notoriety, although he was urgedand could have accepted positions of prominence. He has ably conducted our schools,and it was principally through his hard and diligent work that our city is classedtoday as having one of the best conducted and equipped high and graded school buildingsin the state." Recently there has been started among his former pupils a movementto erect in Cedarburg a suitable monument to the memory of Charles Lau. However thatmay develop, the school itself will ever be his monument.

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