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ØSTERVRAA LOKALHISTORIE

Lærer Jens Christian Christensen Nyholm  -  Denmark
Tekstboks: Some information about Mr. Nyholm. In 1862 Jens Christian Nyholm came to the little thatched school behind the county road which went through Østervrå. At that time Østervrå was only a small village of 5 or 6 farms and a few houses. During the 34 years he was the headmaster of the school he became highly respected – not only because of his teaching but also because he was the moving spirit behind the work of getting a church erected at Østervrå. He became the natural leader of the building of the church for which he was later knighted with the Order of Dannebrog. In those days corporal punishment was a common thing in all Danish schools, and slaps in the face, boxes and clips on the ear were daily phenomenons. Valdemar Peter Christensen, a former postmaster, who knew a lot about our local history, once told us that when his big brother came to the old school at the age of eleven, he was given a proper slap in the face on his first schoolday just because he dared ask Mr. Nyholm how to solve a certain arithmetical problem. In winter when the school pond (it does not exist nowadays) was frozen over, the children amused themselves by sliding on the ice during the recesses (the breaks). Then it could be very difficult for them to break away when Mr. Nyholm called them back to class again. On a certain occation temptation became too strong for them. They “missed” the teacher’s call and remained a little too long on the ice which they should come to regret later on. The road back to the school went in between two hedges, and what the pupils did not know vas that Mr. Nyholm was waiting for them right there hidden behind one of the hedges. When they came running up to the opening between the hedges, he suddenly stepped forward and knocked them with his cat-o’-nine-tails as fast as they ran past him. The preceding was told some years ago by one of Jens Chr. Nyholm’s pupils, the departed Isak Andersen, an old man of nearly 100. In 1999 a female teacher’s office was established at the school. It must have been a relief for J.C. Nyholm. Like most teachers in the country he had had the difficult job of teaching many pupils of different ages at the same time during their seven years’ schooling. The last female teacher at the old school from 1848 was Pouline Jensen. She was a kind and nice person who used the cat-o’-nine-tails in a “gentle” way. The old Isak Andersen related that the boys did not find it so bad tasting her cat-o’-nine-tails whereas it was much more serious when Mr. Nyholm swung the same terrible means of punishment. Jens Christian Nyholm retired when the new school began at Skolegade (schoolstreet which is now called Vrængmosevej). Pouline Jensen, however, continued as a teacher at the new school until she retired and moved to the neighbourhood of Herning “where she lived till she became very old”. Karen Baier