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Picture of the day -
February 24, 2007
"Little Red Schoolhouse"
Photo courtesy of
Bob Davis.
In days of old, the heartland of America was dotted with countless
one-room schoolhouses, many of which served as their community's
only school building. Kids of all ages were usually taught together
by a single teacher with each student receiving lessons and
instruction at a level appropriate for his/her age and grade level.
It's hard for me to imagine just how difficult it must have been for
the teacher to keep everything straight and for the students to
study their lessons while other kids in the same room were learning
something completely different! It surely must have been something
akin to organized chaos!
But back then there were few alternatives for educating the children
in most small communities and towns. There was typically little or no money
available for building new schools or hiring additional teachers,
and there usually weren't enough students to justify such an
expansion if there had been. So the teacher was tasked with doing
the best he or she could at making the kids "mind" while teaching them
the three R's: Readin', Writin', and 'Rithmetic.
By the time I came along there were no one-room schoolhouses still
being used in our area, but the one my dad attended as a child stood
empty less than two miles from our rural Widener Valley, Virginia
home until it was finally demolished in the 1980's. Times were
different then and dad quit school after finishing the 6th grade in
order to go to work to help support his large family. But
the "schooling" he did receive in that little one-room school house
must have been quite good because he turned out to be one of the
most intelligent and well-read people I ever knew.
Today there are still a handful of active one-room schoolhouses scattered
across the country, but most communities and towns now have at least
two, and often three or more school buildings with the kids "moving
up" from one school to the next as they increase in age and grade.
Most people see this as progress, but sometimes I wonder
if that's really the case.
About the photo:
Mr. Bob Davis kindly submitted today's picture of the "Little
Red Schoolhouse". It is still standing after all these years in
Columbia, South Carolina.
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