One-room schoolhouse

“ The school building should be in a dry, sunny, sightly spot. Ordinarily it should face the southern compass. This would move seven tenths of our rural schoolhouses, and turn more than half of them end for end. It is not at all necessary that a school building should face the road, or be very near it. Light, warmth, horizon, room to play, these are the important considerations in locating a schoolhouse. ”

“ In the middle is an iron stove, around which on a winter’s day are parked four benches in a hollow square, upon which, or studying in the corner, huddle and wriggle twenty-three pupils, ranging from seven up to twenty-one years of age. They are reading physiology aloud, in the midst of the gaunt room, with very little in the way of blackboards or materials. An example of the better district schoolhouse is in a populous region near the mill town of Talassee ”

“ There are no adequate provisions for the pupils who are supposed to be studying, because this one teacher in the one room must be hearing a class recite on some subject at practically every period in the day. The one-room building does not satisfy the progressive community. The device which has been adopted is that of consolidating a number of one-room schools and transporting the pupils through the necessary distances to make possible large schools with separate rooms for pupils of different ages. A consolidated school has facilities which are impossible in a one-room school. ”

“ The school always looks impressively quiet and remote. Few windows are lighted and only one door is open. After picking her way through crowded streets, stepping around small children, narrowly avoiding collisions with innumerable boys and girls darting in and out among the crowds, the visitor finds the inside of the building quite deserted, and her footsteps echo in the great, gray, empty basement. She can find no one to direct her to the principal, but presently seeing a few girls straggling up the fireproof stairs she follows them to the assembly room, a waste of empty desks. ”

“ Not only does the school building reflect the internal needs of the school organization which it houses, but there is also a close relation between the school and the distribution of the population in the community. A sparsely settled community invariably used to have a one-room school, because the distances which pupils must travel are such that it is difficult to bring together enough pupils to justify a larger building. The one-room building is likely, however, to offer only the most meager educational opportunities. There is only one teacher. ”

“ If we could effect some alterations in the style of school architecture in our school houses, especially the primary departments, it would be a great desideratum. One of the greatest evils at present existing is the method of constructing the school room and of conducting the same. ”

“ The schoolroom is so primitive that you would hardly recognize it as such. Light and air and space are all too little. There are no desks or even benches. A small, wooden blackboard and the teacher's table and rickety chair are all that it can boast in the way of equipment. The only interesting thing in sight is the children themselves, rows of them on the floor, writing letters in the sand. Unwashed they are, uncombed and almost unclothed, but with all the witchery of childhood in their eyes. In that bare room lies the possibility of transforming the life of the Village of the Seven Palms. ”

“ Heartless as it may seem to say so, the outlook for any radical improvement of the one-room school, especially under the district system, appears hopeless. Poor as it is, the cost per pupil is greater than that for the best city schools. ”

“ In the first place there should never be any waste paper on the basement floor; and in the second place boys should never carry parlor matches, or any other kind of matches, to school. There are more precious lives in a schoolhouse than in any other building in the whole world. ”

“ Never in any public school have I seen such a splendidly equipped Domestic Science room as the one in the McKinley Park School. Its beautiful open, airy Assembly Hall with its hardwood floors and stage for private theatricals and other social affairs is the acme of modern refinement. ”

“ There are no public schoolhouses. The school is [Pg 24] sometimes held in the temple, sometimes in the home of the schoolmaster, and sometimes in the home of a wealthy patron. The furniture of the schoolroom consists of an altar consecrated to Confucius and the god of knowledge, a desk and a chair for the teacher, and the pupils' desks and stools, provided by the children themselves. No effort is made to render the room attractive. ”

“ The structure, which is to supersede the old school-house, will have two apartments, airy, spacious, and lofty, one for boys the other for girls, in which they will be instructed by respective teachers, {351}and not crowded together as in the old school-room, under one and the same person; each room will be capable of containing at least 100 children ”

“ That they are not so firmly intrenched in the country schools is due usually to difficulties in the way of securing equipment and to the already crowded condition of the school program. The ideal remedy is the substitution of the consolidated school with its domestic science room and its specially trained teacher for the scattered one-room buildings. Wherever the consolidated school has come, it has been enthusiastically received and supported. ”

“ This is the youngest child among the chartered institutions of the Association, but even this child is crying out for enlarged accommodations. The enrollment of the school [318] shows a considerable increase over that of last year, and the promise for the year now opening is still larger. One building only answers all the purposes of this institution. Here are the school rooms, the teachers rooms, the President’s residence and office, dormitories, rooms for industrial training of girls, library, chapel, dining room, kitchen and laundry, and it is not a large building either. ”

“ These defects constitute a serious menace to the physical welfare of pupils and teachers and, of course, seriously interfere with good work. It is crowded. Intercommunication is devious and inconvenient. The building is quite unfit for high school uses. Some of the school furniture is very poor; the physical and chemical classrooms and laboratories are very unsatisfactory, and its biological laboratory and equipment scarcely less so. The assembly room is too small, badly arranged, and badly furnished. There are no toilet-rooms for the teachers, and there is no common room. ”

“ School-houses have been like barns in the country, and like warehouses in the city, rather than fit places for children to exist and study in. The book comprises a series of twenty-three designs for school-buildings, ranging from a loghouse of one room to a brick building of two stories and basement, and containing eight rooms. ”

“ Better Buildings and Inspection.—Similar improvements are attained in the building as a whole, in the individual rooms, and in the interior equipment. Such buildings are usually planned by competent architects and are more adequate in all their appointments. All things are subject to inspection, both by the community and the authorities. It is natural that such inspection and criticism will be satisfied only with the best; and so the surroundings of pupils become much more favorable to their mental, moral, and physical well-being than was possible in the isolated one-room school building. ”

“ There should also be one or more rooms for recitation, apparatus, library, etc., according to the size of the school and the number of scholars to be accommodated.
Every school-room should be so constructed that each scholar may pass to and from his seat without disturbing or in the least incommoding any other one. A house thus arranged will enable the teacher to pass at all times to any part of the room, and to approach each scholar in his seat whenever it may be desirable to do so for purposes of instruction or otherwise. ”

“ The well-to-do child, less than ten squares away, who bent over her problems in a quiet room, could scarcely appreciate the difficulties attached to homework, when the family lives in three rooms and does everything possible to reduce the bill for kerosene.
There is just one place in every neighborhood where the child can find light, air and quiet—that place is the school. Why then should the school not be open for the child? ”

“ This additional efficiency is paid for by the saving on buildings effected by the two school systems. Each grade room is used by at least four184 different classes, so each child does not have a desk where he keeps his things and belongings, but has a locker for his books and changes his classroom at the end of the hour. No one teacher is responsible for one set of pupils, but for her own work, and in the same way the pupils are responsible for themselves. Obviously such a scheme as this requires a real spirit of coöperation among the pupils and teachers, and also good business management. ”

“ And if the school premises are now too small in extent to admit of such a use, let the pupils make an earnest plea for additional ground. As a general fact our school-grounds have been shamefully limited in extent and neglected as to their use and keeping. The school-house, in itself and in its surroundings, ought to be one of the most beautiful and attractive objects to be seen in any community. The approach from the street should be like that to any dwelling house, over well kept walks bordered by green turf, with trees and shrubs and flowers offering their adornment. ”

“ I venture to say that three fourths of the graduates of this school, who are now teaching, have no opportunity for daily study and preparation for the duties of the school-room, except that afforded by a seat in the evening in the common sitting-room of the family, surrounded by children that are not always models of behavior, and within sight and hearing of all the petty details of household life. ”

“ Those who wish to train their children's taste must resolutely clear the school-room of all such stumbling-blocks. Ugly furniture cannot always be replaced; but it is at least possible to remove unsuitable pictures and knick-knacks.
It is essential that the school-room should be cheerful. Dark colors, besides necessitating the use of much artificial light, are depressing to children and consequently out of place in the school-room: white woodwork, and walls tinted in some bright color, form the best background for both work and play. ”

“ Let each township, or perhaps somewhat smaller area, select a central, well-adapted site and thereon erect a modern, well-equipped school building. But this building must not be just the traditional schoolhouse with its classrooms and rows of desks. For it is to be more than a place where the children will study and recite lessons from books; it is to be the place where all the people of the neighborhood, old and young, will [Pg 33] assemble for entertainment, amusement, and instruction. ”

“ The Boarding-house was to provide a dining-hall, rooms for preparatory studies and dormitories for fifty boys, together with apartments for a Master in charge. The Trust Funds were not sufficient to build the School up afresh, with new Boarding-houses and new Class-rooms and it was a debateable question what site they should choose. The first proposal was to use the recently built School and convert the upper room into a dormitory and so increase the accommodation with a minimum of expense. ”

“ But the district school will, at best, [Pg 166] be only the social center of a neighborhood, and in many cases its district is too small for successful play or social life. Furthermore, the average one-room school is ill-adapted in architecture or equipment for social purposes. The consolidated school or village high school may well be made a social center as far as it is possible for it to so function and new schools should be, and are being, constructed with this in view. ”

“ Our task is only to put up the building, not to conduct the school. Say that during the last few years—two or three—more than 700 poor boys have applied for admission to Good Will, and had to be refused it for lack of room. These boys were deserving. Say further that if you get the subscription the school will be built, and, by turning a house now used for the school into a dwelling, more boys can be taken—boys of five, six, and seven years of age, who are now homeless, may be given homes, school advantages, and a chance to become useful Christian men. ”

“ Time was when the one-room school house was quite as well built and furnished as the dwellings from which the children came, but that is past and there is no gainsaying that the one room district school is generally unsightly, illy ventilated and meagerly equipped. Moreover, the few children, many classes, formal bookish instruction, and inadequately trained teachers make it altogether unsatisfactory. However, a habit dies hard even though through evolution the use for that habit has disappeared. ”

“ Inside the building there is insufficient light and ventilation, and the old-fashioned furniture is ill adapted to the needs of the pupils. The whole structure is almost devoid of the conveniences and modern devices for making school life either comfortable or worth while. In such an environment there is none of the stimulus that the school should furnish. ”

“ In none were any means provided for the ventilation of the room. In many of the districts, the school-rooms are too small for the number of scholars. The location of the school-houses is generally pleasant. There are, however, but few instances where play-grounds are attached, and their condition as to privies is very bad. The arrangement of seats and desks is generally very bad, and inconvenient to both scholars and teachers ”