courtesy of https://briarcroft.wordpress.com/2012/09/01/schools-left-behind/

“Tell me and I forget,
teach me and I may remember,
involve me and I learn.”
― Benjamin Franklin

An advantage to driving the back roads across the country is seeing authentic rural America minus chain restaurants and gas stations. Remarkably, there are shells of old abandoned buildings still standing, sometimes just barely, bearing witness to the ways things used to be done.

The one room school house has been left behind in this day and age of easier transportation allowing children from as far away as fifty miles to be bussed daily into large school districts. Educating large numbers of children together in same-age groups may be more cost-effective and more efficient, but does it enhance learning? I’m not sure there is clear evidence of a benefit when you look at the sad drop-out rate prior to graduation and dismal standardized test scores.

The one room school house of yesteryear became the center of small communities, serving as the gathering spot for holiday programs and meals, voting in elections, as well as public meetings where important decisions would be made. There was community pride and honor within those doors. It was the great equalizer among families from diverse economic, ethnic and faith backgrounds; the one room school brought them all together under the same roof.

This kind of classroom environment would be a challenge for any teacher, particularly the scarcely trained single women of 17 or 18 who were placed in these settings. But with older children helping the younger, the responsibility for education didn’t fall solely on the shoulders of the teacher. Students became teachers themselves out of necessity–they were involved and thereby learned.

Both my parents were in one room school houses in rural settings until high school. Both went on to college and became teachers themselves. I remember as a child visiting the remnants of my mother’s schoolhouse sitting at a crossroads in the rural Palouse hills of eastern Washington. Now only a foundation exists, but what a foundation it laid for children of the wheat farms like my mother and her descendents. Two generations later, our three children are teaching or plan to teach as a life long career.

The two schools pictured here are still standing, most likely abandoned over seventy or more years ago. It was grand to see them last week on our travels. I could almost hear the bell clanging announcing the start of the school day, the chatter and laughter of children as they entered the large room, and feel the warmth of the pot-bellied stove on a brisk autumn day.

Surely the exercise of education in these little schools was challenging, full of gaps and flaws. The teachers were not always skilled enough, the children unruly and the multi-age classroom chaotic. But the existence of these humble little buildings meant there was a community commitment to the future and hope for a brighter tomorrow. Even though the schools have now been left behind, standing empty and abandoned, the promise they represent is still worth celebrating.

Sometimes you just don’t know what you had until it is gone.