# How did one-room schoolhouses work? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 10, 2014, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370 "2014-03-10T18:18:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370/21 "2014-03-11T00:02:28Z")
There still are one- and two-teacher schools in remoter parts of Australia – though for really remote parts you have distance education at home. That distance education used to be by correspondence (written lessons sent to and back by mail) and by radio, but now seems to be via the Internet. Typically one- and two-teacher schools are for grades K-6 – in high school you can commute further by school bus, you can go to a boarding school, or you can continue your distance education at home. (Back more than 50 years ago, I was enrolled in the New South Wales Correspondence School for my second-last year of high school, but I wasn’t a typical student – my family was living in London, England, for the year, so I was living about 12,000 miles from the school in Sydney, i.e., about as far away from school as you can be and still be on the Earth’s surface. That really put the “distance” into “distance education”.) ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370/22 "2014-03-11T00:13:53Z")
My father stayed in the army after the war and was sent to Sierra Leone (then a British colony) where I had all of my primary education. It wasn’t a ‘one room school’ but there were usually only about 20 or so pupils altogether with two teachers. Of course there were no native children - the school was for European army kids only. This biggest problem was that teachers usually cam on a six moth tour, and then went home. Some of them were not really the best quality either. The consequence was, that when I went to a boarding secondary school back in England, I was way ahead in some things, and clueless in others. ---
**Author:** ![Inna\_Minnit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Inna\_Minnit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inna_Minnit)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370/23 "2014-03-11T01:29:38Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > In other words, it was a lot like grad school, except with more spitwads and half the class was illiterate. I don’t know about illiterate as much as not motivated. These were, for the most part, ranch kids. The ones whose parents were ranch hands, pretty much expected to be ranch hands as well, and didn’t see much point to school. The kids whose parents owned the ranches were expected to go to college to take over the business one day. > [@janeslogin](#): > > I was the only kid in my class. I recall it as pretty much like Inna Minnit describes. I would eve-drop on the older classes most of the time and got ahead by the third grade to where I was asked to tutor first and second grade addition subtraction. The teacher wanted me to skip from the fourth to the sixth grade but my parents would not allow it. I became a ‘‘discipline’’ problem but a discipline problem back there, back then, amounted to staring out the window or some similarly egregious breech. I got in trouble for reading too much. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370/24 "2014-03-11T01:35:45Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > In other words, it was a lot like grad school, except with more spitwads and half the class was illiterate. So…exactly like grad school. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370/25 "2014-03-11T01:38:38Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > In other words, it was a lot like grad school, except with more spitwads and half the class was illiterate. So basically, just like grad school. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370/26 "2014-03-11T04:14:41Z")
> [@Doug\_Bowe](#): > > If you’d like to watch a one-room school house in operation see if you can find some episodes of “Frontier House.” It was a PBS show that first ran in Spring, 2002. Three families had to live as if it was 1883 Montana, and a one room schoolhouse for the kids was part of it. There’s also [http://www.countryschoolmovie.com](http://www.countryschoolmovie.com), a wonderful documentary that came out a couple years ago and has aired on many PBS stations. It’s not available through Netflix yet, but I think you can watch it (or parts of it) online, or get it through your local library if you don’t want to buy it. It details the history of one-room schoolhouses (adding that there are about 200 known to still exist in the American public school system today) and interviews teachers and students who experienced them. It’s NOT sugarcoated by any stretch of the imagination; interviewees talk about unsafe buildings, inadequate materials, and abusive or incompetent teachers, and because one man talks about “an older boy who was a bully” who raped smaller children, presumably including him, at knifepoint, it is not suitable for young children. Most of the movie is set in Wisconsin, and it seems that most people’s favorite story about it is the one about a radio program called School of the Air, which in the early 1930s was as revolutionary as the Khan Academy is now. For example, they had art classes, and they would do things like play several minutes of classical music at the beginning of the program and then tell the kids, “Draw what you just heard.” ---
**Author:** ![Tethered\_Kite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a5b964/32.png) [@Tethered\_Kite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tethered_Kite)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370/27 "2014-03-11T04:37:30Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > How did graduation from one-room schoolhouses work, especially with everyone at a different level? Did you have a file (“Permanent Record”, lol) where you advanced from first to second, third, fourth, etc. grade in lockstep, or was it more of a competence model where you graduated after you finished all your requirements? I remember that one novel (I think it was Understood Betsy), the heroine enrolls in a new school and is given exams to place her at a grade level - could she take exams later and jump higher, or is she stuck in a track to age 18? > > Say it’s 1920, I’m sixteen-and-a-half, I’m a genius, and I want to apply to Harvard now. Can I apply to graduate from my one-room schoolhouse by pretty please-ing the teacher and asking to take my graduation exams now, finish my senior term paper by candlelight, etc., or would I be told to go back to my desk and do Questions 5-20 on Page 58 of the math book like I was told? > > Or did one-room schoolhouses not have graduation per se, and people simply left school at age 18 or as soon as they finished the last book in the curriculum? I think in the Midwest it was pretty flexible. My mother was teaching by age sixteen in 1936. Attitudes toward education were different in farm country. And everything had to revolve around the farm work first so people were coming and going in the spring and fall. If a family member died or the hired man left that might mean the end of a child’s education. And many still believed that girls only needed the first four years or so. I remember the years of summer school and the night classes she had to take over the years to keep her certificate up to date. And when she did her practice teaching in a modular school which was competency-based I can remember her laughing about how modern they thought the concept was when it had been what she’d been doing years before. ---
**Author:** ![Tethered\_Kite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a5b964/32.png) [@Tethered\_Kite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tethered_Kite)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370/28 "2014-03-11T04:43:13Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > So…exactly like grad school. I think the one room schoolhouse kids were probably better educated in the language arts, civics and the classics. There wouldn’t have been any spitballs in mom’s classroom. Um, and probably not much of that in college either in the early twentieth century. She’s gone now but I still run into people she taught and I always hear the same thing. “She was strict! But you really learned from her.” ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370/29 "2014-03-11T05:18:20Z")
Anyone who is interested in the OP’s question might find it interesting to read “Why Shoot the Teacher?”, a book by Max Braithwaite who taught in a one-room school house in Saskatchewan during the Depression. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370/30 "2014-03-11T05:32:25Z")
> [@Tethered\_Kite](#): > > And many still believed that girls only needed the first four years or so. I was very surprised to find out that in the mid 1800s, American women were more likely to be literate than men. Very few women outside the upper classes attended college (that was true for men as well), but as for basic learning, it was believed that girls needed to know how to read, etc. so they could teach their children, whereas boys only really needed to know how to sign their names and maybe recognize enough basic words to read the Bible and/or basic contracts. The boys were also needed to work on the farm or in the family business. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370/31 "2014-03-11T11:21:10Z")
> [@janeslogin](#): > > to where I was asked to tutor first and second grade addition subtraction. I recall there being a lot of this. The teacher used good students to ‘lead’ a small group of other students. And not always younger students – she had no problem putting a good reader 3nd grader to lead a group of mostly 3rd & 4th graders. Also, she organized these small groups based on ability, not grade – a group would be all those reading at the same level, even if some were 2nd grade and some were 4yh or 5th grade. (That may have been a bit uncommon, though.) And she made leading a group seem like it was a reward thing, so if you messed around, got too noisy, etc. you didn’t get to do it. Also, she tried to have everyone do it on occasion, even poor students. She would have a slow-reading 5th grader leading a group of mostly 2nd & 3rd graders in reading. Also, I don’t understand the concern about blizzards! (Except as needed to make a dramatic story.) These one-room schoolhouses were local – everybody lived within 2-3 miles of the school. From my school you could see 2 farmhouses within a quarter-mile, 3 more within a half-mile, and another 3 within three-quarters of a mile. It wasn’t like you were really isolated. And if a storm had been bad enough, we could have done just fine staying in the schoolhouse. It had it’s own well, a wood stove with a woodpile outside (and an axe, and a grove of trees alongside the playground). The basement had a lunchroom, with a kitchen & a pantry full of food staples, so we wouldn’t have starved. There was even a supply of blankets & floor pads (that the little kids used for their naptime), so we could have slept reasonably well. If we’d ever been snowed in the school by a blizzard, we probably would have thought it quite an adventure. Certainly safer than being outside, trying to walk home (we nearly all walked to school). And no chores to do! And the schoolhouse had a phone, so we could contact parents (many of the were on the same party line). Doesn’t seem like a blizzard would have been a big deal at all. ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370/32 "2014-03-11T14:09:55Z")
The best “google” for more information, at least in modern terms and setting, would be “open classroom”. I was trained in OC and taught in one for a couple years and it was basically a modern adaption of the standard “one room schoolhouse” in terms of lesson planning and operation. In fact we had to go through a lot of the history and surviving records as part of our study and prep. ---
**Author:** ![Tethered\_Kite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a5b964/32.png) [@Tethered\_Kite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tethered_Kite)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370/33 "2014-03-11T18:36:43Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > Also, I don’t understand the concern about blizzards! (Except as needed to make a dramatic story.) > These one-room schoolhouses were local – everybody lived within 2-3 miles of the school. From my school you could see 2 farmhouses within a quarter-mile, 3 more within a half-mile, and another 3 within three-quarters of a mile. It wasn’t like you were really isolated. And if a storm had been bad enough, we could have done just fine staying in the schoolhouse. It had it’s own well, a wood stove with a woodpile outside (and an axe, and a grove of trees alongside the playground). The basement had a lunchroom, with a kitchen & a pantry full of food staples, so we wouldn’t have starved. There was even a supply of blankets & floor pads (that the little kids used for their naptime), so we could have slept reasonably well. > > If we’d ever been snowed in the school by a blizzard, we probably would have thought it quite an adventure. Certainly safer than being outside, trying to walk home (we nearly all walked to school). And no chores to do! And the schoolhouse had a phone, so we could contact parents (many of the were on the same party line). Doesn’t seem like a blizzard would have been a big deal at all. Perhaps you are looking through modern eyes. Or your child’s eyes. Or maybe you’ve never experienced a major blizzard out on the flatlands. Here’s some help: Read _The Children’s Blizzard_ by David Laskin. Or research the blizzard of 1937 and the Armistice Day blizzard of 1940. Loss of life and disfigurement from freezing were genuine threats, not dramatization. During the latter mom confiscated all the children’s food to portion out a little at a time and before they were finally rescued she had had to burn all the wood, the books and the desks to keep them all from freezing to death. She told me she was afraid that she’d be fired for that in spite of its necessity. Fortunately she had had the foresight to tie a rope from the classroom door to the outhouse. It wasn’t uncommon for farmers to do the same with their outbuildings. They’d become disoriented by the blowing snow and wind and wander off to freeze. After four days a farmer was finally able to reach them with a manure spreader full of heated bricks and blankets, the only equipment which would accommodate them and get through the snow. At that point the roads were still so blocked that the school population stayed at his farmhouse for several days. Even with all the modern conveniences blizzards continue to be life-threatening. ---
**Author:** ![Tethered\_Kite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a5b964/32.png) [@Tethered\_Kite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tethered_Kite)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370/34 "2014-03-11T18:40:41Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > I was very surprised to find out that in the mid 1800s, American women were more likely to be literate than men. Very few women outside the upper classes attended college (that was true for men as well), but as for basic learning, it was believed that girls needed to know how to read, etc. so they could teach their children, whereas boys only really needed to know how to sign their names and maybe recognize enough basic words to read the Bible and/or basic contracts. The boys were also needed to work on the farm or in the family business. Interesting. I’d want to guess that that would have been true for eastern women more than Midwestern from the stories I’ve heard here from my elders. But then it could make some sense that book-learning may have not been seen as a masculine pursuit. Where did you learn that? ---
**Author:** ![Kimballkid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b5a626/32.png) [@Kimballkid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimballkid)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370/35 "2014-03-11T18:59:12Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > How did graduation from one-room schoolhouses work, especially with everyone at a different level? Did you have a file (“Permanent Record”, lol) where you advanced from first to second, third, fourth, etc. grade in lockstep, or was it more of a competence model where you graduated after you finished all your requirements? I remember that one novel (I think it was Understood Betsy), the heroine enrolls in a new school and is given exams to place her at a grade level - could she take exams later and jump higher, or is she stuck in a track to age 18? > > Say it’s 1920, I’m sixteen-and-a-half, I’m a genius, and I want to apply to Harvard now. Can I apply to graduate from my one-room schoolhouse by pretty please-ing the teacher and asking to take my graduation exams now, finish my senior term paper by candlelight, etc., or would I be told to go back to my desk and do Questions 5-20 on Page 58 of the math book like I was told? > > Or did one-room schoolhouses not have graduation per se, and people simply left school at age 18 or as soon as they finished the last book in the curriculum? Usually the way it worked around here was that you went to the one-room schoolhouse (or country school as we called it) through 8th grade and then either dropped out to help work the farm or find other work or you went to the high school in town. Most country schools were associated with one of the nearby town’s school districts so the curriculum was set to coincide with that of the town schools. ---
**Author:** ![Kenm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370/36 "2014-03-11T19:03:47Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Anyone who is interested in the OP’s question might find it interesting to read “Why Shoot the Teacher?”, a book by Max Braithwaite who taught in a one-room school house in Saskatchewan during the Depression. The full movie version’s [**on YouTube**](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=122JVAfQiJw). In Grade 6 I was in a Grade 5/Grade 6 classroom shared by 33 or 34 other kids and one teacher. The Grade 5 kids were closer to the windows, damn their eyes. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2014, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370/37 "2014-03-12T02:11:14Z")
> [@Tethered\_Kite](#): > > Perhaps you are looking through modern eyes. Or your child’s eyes. Or maybe you’ve never experienced a major blizzard out on the flatlands. > > Here’s some help: Read _The Children’s Blizzard_ by David Laskin. Or research the blizzard of 1937 and the Armistice Day blizzard of 1940. Loss of life and disfigurement from freezing were genuine threats, not dramatization. > > During the latter mom confiscated all the children’s food to portion out a little at a time and before they were finally rescued she had had to burn all the wood, the books and the desks to keep them all from freezing to death. She told me she was afraid that she’d be fired for that in spite of its necessity. > > Fortunately she had had the foresight to tie a rope from the classroom door to the outhouse. It wasn’t uncommon for farmers to do the same with their outbuildings. They’d become disoriented by the blowing snow and wind and wander off to freeze. > > After four days a farmer was finally able to reach them with a manure spreader full of heated bricks and blankets, the only equipment which would accommodate them and get through the snow. At that point the roads were still so blocked that the school population stayed at his farmhouse for several days. > > Even with all the modern conveniences blizzards continue to be life-threatening. I’ve read “The Children’s Blizzard”. Incredible story, and another variant of “the perfect storm”. Where did your mother teach? I just looked at the Wiki page, and it said that an estimated 1.5 million turkeys destined for Thanksgiving died in that storm instead. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2014, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370/38 "2014-03-12T02:25:31Z")
My mom taught in a 2-room schoolhouse, with no running water or hot lunches, for a year or two, in a rural area. Then the district consolidated into a “modern” building with 4 classrooms (grades 1-8) and a hot lunch kitchen/cafeteria. It really wasn’t that bad, and kids got educated, you bet. Interactions are a lot different under those conditions, but it doesn’t mean that education was neglected. I remember, in the first/second grade classrooms, being called out to assist the slower kids when I finished my assignment or test before they did. It was expected. ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2014, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370/39 "2014-03-12T02:32:58Z")
> [@ThisUsernameIsForbidden](#): > > Teachers were well-respected and considered a valuable asset to the community. Not terribly relevant but an interesting remark. Schools years were short (6 months?) and for the rest of the year, the teacher had to eke out some other form of living. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2014, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370/40 "2014-03-12T18:07:47Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > How did graduation from one-room schoolhouses work, especially with everyone at a different level? … > > Or did one-room schoolhouses not have graduation per se, and people simply left school at age 18 or as soon as they finished the last book in the curriculum? My mother’s one-room class was for compulsory education, so from age 6 (actually, children who would be turning 6) to 10; this was in a rural area in northern Spain in 1957-9. There were no “grades” per se, just a curriculum that had to be fulfilled. Students could choose to take a _reválida_ (an exam validating that their education had in fact been correct and complete), but only those who wanted to have the certificate in order to continue their studies or to get a job requiring/valuing one would. Graduation doesn’t exist here, but in any case, students would stop attending when their family needed them more someplace else or after leaving for a higher school; mostly the first. Later she taught in an “academy” in Barcelona, 1959-66. This was a private school with both day and night classes; she taught days. Her class covered 10-14, the so-called “elementary baccalaurate”, and again there was a _reválida_ after it in order to move to “higher baccalaurate”, to a profession valuing the elementary bac certificate, or to one of the professional schools (such as Teaching) which required it. She would teach the whole class at the same time on most subjects, albeit with different proficiency requirements depending on the students’ age: for example, if she made them write an essay, the whole class would have to write an essay on the same subject but she’d expect better ones from the older students; after all, even if they’d been getting their teaching together, an older student would have been getting it for longer. Other subjects which require a more fixed progression, such as Math, would separate the students depending on their level. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-one-room-schoolhouses-work/683370.md?page=3)