The Movement toward Public Schooling
> Photo 5.1 The small rural school also served as a cultural center for the community.
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The Granger Collection, NYC
The One-Room School In much of the country, especially in the rural areas of farms and small towns, the typical public school was a one-room building in which a single woman taught boys and girls, ranging in age from 6 or 7 to 16 or 17 (Photo 5.1). The local school district, with its single one-room school, could act as almost a direct democracy in which an elected school board set the tax rate and hired and supervised the teacher.21 Or some board’s members might be local tyrants, arbitrarily imposing their rules and regulations on teachers and students.
A web presentation on the one-room school is “One Room Schools: Michigan’s Educational Legacy,” Clarke Historical Library, (Mount Pleasant: Central Michigan University).
21
1833 Election to Massachusetts Senate 1837 Appointed Secretary of Massachusetts Board of Education 1838 Writes first of ten annual reports on education
1848 Elected to US House of Representatives 1852 President of Antioch College in Ohio 1859 Death
1831 1838 1846 1853 1860
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