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49 pages 1 hour read

Avi

The Secret School

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2001

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Character Analysis

Ida Bidson

The story’s main protagonist is 14-year-old Ida. An eighth grader, Ida dreams of becoming a teacher, and when Miss Fletcher leaves the school to take care of her ailing mother, Ida fills in for her at the schoolhouse. It’s a daring choice—if the school board finds out, she’ll be in big trouble—but Ida is determined to get through the school year and advance to high school. She takes on a heavy workload that includes teaching the other students at school, grading papers, doing chores at her family’s farm, and studying, when she can, for her exit exam. Ida is smart, dedicated, industrious, and conscientious: If anyone can do all of this, she can.

The tasks she takes on are adult-level, and Ida must grow rapidly as a person to succeed. Driving herself and Felix to and from the schoolhouse, instructing children, keeping them orderly, guarding their secret from opponents, negotiating with county school inspector Miss Sedgewick, and confronting angry farmer Mr. Bixler—these challenges require grown-up skills. Ida learns quickly from mistakes, treats people respectfully, and speaks with honest sincerity, assets that many adults can’t muster. Her biggest challenge, though, is herself: She doubts that she can succeed, and much of the stress she feels comes from the fear that she won’t make it and that her future dreams will come crashing down.

Ida finds that when she explains truthfully what she and the other children need, most people come to her aid. She receives steadfast support from her parents, Tom, the other students, and Miss Sedgewick. They become her allies and cheerleaders; with their help and her unwavering determination, Ida gets the class through the year, and she receives honors on her exit exam. She graduates to the next step on the path toward achieving her dreams, but, more importantly, she passes the test of self-reliance.

Tom Kohl

One of Ida’s two most important allies at school (the other is Miss Sedgewick), Tom is Ida’s age and her best friend. Like Ida, he must complete eighth grade so he can move on to high school and, he hopes, eventually become an electrical engineer. Tom is handy and smart: He builds his own radio, fixes car engines, and repairs an old printing press that he and Ida use to notify their neighbors about a school board meeting that will decide the fate of the schoolhouse. He also thinks up the idea of having Ida become the schoolteacher.

Over time, Tom and Ida have developed feelings for one another, but they keep that issue at arm’s length. Still, each can rely on the other for support. Tom’s homemade radio reminds Ida that there’s a big world out there beyond the valley, a world she’d like to explore. Tom’s abiding interest in electronics inspires and encourages her desire for a professional career.

Herbert Bixler

One of the older children at the Elk Valley school, Herbert, attends when his father doesn’t need his help around the farm. Herbert thus is behind in his studies; he also is the class rebel who sasses the teacher and, for his troubles, sometimes gets a whipping from the dreaded switch. Herbert acts tough and devil-may-care to deflect his fear of falling behind the other students and feeling like an ignorant country rube. He relieves his stress by daring first-day teacher Ida to make him study; she passes that test brilliantly by turning the other students against him and forcing him to back down.

Herbert discovers that Ida thinks he’s smart, something his father doesn’t believe, and that she wants him to succeed in his studies. Herbert’s troubles are an extreme version of Ida’s conflicts: She, too, must do her chores first before studying. Caught between his desire to learn and his father’s need to keep him on the farm, Herbert compromises: He reveals to Ida his father’s plan to close the school, and then he flunks his final exam. He assuages his pain by deciding to join the Navy when he’s old enough and escape his father’s domination and learn something about the world.

Herbert stands in for American children who grew up on farms in the early 1900s and struggled with educational opportunities. He also represents the urge to better oneself elsewhere.

Miss Sedgewick

The tall, elegant woman who visits Ida at the schoolhouse is Miss Sedgewick, a school inspector for the local county’s Education Office and an important supporting character. Though perturbed by Ida’s attempt to fill in as a teacher, on instinct, she accepts the idea and bends the rules to let classes continue, with the provision that each student take an exit exam to complete their school year. As she grades the tests, she sees that Ida is quite the scholar, and she recognizes in her a strength of character that will take her far. Miss Sedgewick, therefore, offers to host Ida at her home in the fall so Ida can attend high school without cost to her parents.

Miss Sedgewick wants Ida to reach higher than her farming life normally would permit. As such, she’s a woman in authority who supports the advancement of girls toward greater achievements than their society thinks they can manage.

Mr. Jordan

Ruddy-faced and plump, Mr. Jordan, the local school board chair, owns a grocery and feed store. An antagonist in the story, he’s someone who’ll do anything to save a dime, including closing down the school. He visits the schoolhouse to inform the students that their teacher must leave on family business and that the school year is canceled. When Ida protests that she must finish the year so she can take the exit exam that will allow her to attend high school, Mr. Jordan scolds her for being selfish and seeking an education that he thinks girls don’t really need. He later conspires with Mr. Bixler to hold an unannounced school board meeting that would shut down the school permanently.

His plan fails when Ida learns of it and gathers community members who support her efforts to help students finish their studies. Outvoted and realizing how important education is to the valley’s residents, Mr. Jordan finally expresses admiration for Ida and hopes she’ll return someday as the schoolhouse’s real teacher.

Mr. Jordan represents the early-1900s bias against educating girls, especially in rural areas where education, in general, is seen as a distraction from important farm work. He symbolizes the “penny-pinching” conservatism of impoverished farming regions, where the men often prevented their kids from spending hours away from their farm work getting an education and stopped women from learning more than how to sew and keep house.

Mrs. and Mr. Bidson

Ida’s mother is a hard-working farm woman who juggles household chores with raising three children, including the toddler Shelby. Though undereducated, she wants Ida to finish school and become a teacher. She even agrees that Ida should teach the other kids in her one-room school so she can finish the semester, take the exit exam, and continue to high school. Mrs. Bidson loves and supports her daughter without reserve; she’s a rock on which Ida can steady herself.

Ida’s farmer-father also supports her dreams, and he’s willing to pay for her to live in town near the high school, but he warns that her project to keep the schoolhouse open must take a back seat to her chores at home. Though he puts pressure on Ida, he also agrees with her mother that if she can manage both work and study, it’s a good thing, and he supports it.

Mr. Bixler

Herbert’s father, Mr. Bixler, is a widower and struggling farmer who depends on his son to help him around the farm. Angry at the bad turns his life has taken, he dislikes the school because it pulls his only helper away from the farm. He forbade Miss Fletcher from visiting the farm to check on Herbert, and he does the same when Ida comes looking for her truant student. Mr. Bixler learns that Ida has taken on the role of teacher; seeing her efforts to keep Herbert in school as an ongoing distraction for his son, he conspires with Mr. Jordan to hold an unannounced school board meeting where they can manipulate a vote to close the school permanently.

Though the suffering he feels from his problems evokes sympathy, Mr. Bixler’s angry hatred of the school system and his efforts to quash it make him, along with Mr. Jordan, one of the two chief antagonists in the story. He represents the lingering rural traditions that still see children as farm assets and girls and wives as unworthy of education.

Miss Fletcher

Miss Fletcher teaches at the Elk Valley schoolhouse, where her charges consist of eight students who range from first to eighth grade. When her mother in Iowa has a stroke, Miss Fletcher must leave the school to tend to her. She feels terribly sorry that Ida won’t be able to finish her eighth-grade studies and advance to high school, but she advises Ida to be patient and perhaps take the exam the following year. Ida disagrees, and she notices that Miss Fletcher can pull up stakes and leave, a power Ida would like to have. Miss Fletcher’s sudden absence becomes the stimulus for Ida’s decision to take matters into her own hands, keep the school open, and complete the school year.

Felix

Felix, age seven, is Ida’s younger brother. He attends the one-room Elk Valley school with her, and they get there by driving an old Model T car, with Felix operating the foot pedals by hand while his sister steers. A minor character, Felix serves partly as comic relief and partly as someone Ida loves and goes out of her way to care for. His job pushing the car pedals highlights Ida’s ingenuity as a creative problem-solver.

Students

Aside from Ida, Tom, Felix, and Herbert, four other students make up the Spring 1925 class at Elk Valley School. Mary is Tom’s younger sister and a friend of Felix. Natasha Golobin, 13, is the best speller but weak at geography; when problems arise with the secret school, Natasha asks good questions that help Ida think things through. Charley and Susie Spool live just over the hill and “were always the first to get to school” (6); they’re a bit younger than Natasha. With her beautiful voice, Susie usually leads the class when they sing. Mary, Natasha, Charley, and Susie are all minor characters; they fill out the classroom and present Ida with various grade levels that she must teach.

Mr. Hawkins

Though a minor character, Methodist Minister Hawkins has a major effect at the climactic school board meeting, where he argues that the kids merely are doing what the community wants of them in continuing their studies. He points out that Mr. Jordan neglected to inform anyone of Miss Fletcher’s departure, preventing the township from taking action to secure a new teacher, and that Ida, as a substitute, “saved us a considerable sum of money” in the process (130). His words resonate with the locals, who want their children to get an education, and he publicly disagrees with those, like Mr. Jordan and Mr. Bixler, who wish to remove the school, so the kids have no choice but to continue being cheap farm laborers. Hawkins serves as the moral voice of the author: He steps into the story near the end, makes clear what’s right and wrong at the schoolhouse, and paves the way for a just and reasonable solution to the children’s situation.

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