One‐teacher schools of the future

Abstract

There are more one-teacher schools in the United States than any other kind. No one knows just how many there are; probably very nearly one hundred thousand. They are found in every state, and new ones are established every year. Progressive and thickly populated rural areas have them as well as so called problem areas. Illinois has more than any other state, and Wayne County, Michigan, the county where more automobiles are manufactured than anywhere else in the world, has one-teacher schools beside some of its four lane superhighways. There is something about them that folks like, or there wouldn't be so many. Just plain stubbornness or dislike of change can't account for them all. Americans rather favor new things. One-teacher schools must be pretty good or they would have disappeared. The nostalgic memories of older people about the dear old school days have quite a substantial basis in fact. Fine things may happen, frequently do happen, in one-teacher schools. Hardscuffle School in South Carolina is in what is left of the piney woods after the sawmill moved out. The teacher seemed embarrassed when visitors arrived, and some of the older girls kept slipping out of the room. There was tension in the air as the children fumbled through routine question-and-hope-for-an-answer recitations. Eventually matters came to a head. A girl returned and whispered excitedly to the teacher. The teacher screwed up her courage and explained to the visitors that the school had planned a pilgrim party for the afternoon, and since she had promised the children she felt she must go through with the plans. The girl had just told her that the pull-candy in the kettle over the fire back of the school was about done. Then the children began costuming themselves. The teacher's relief and the children's delight when the visitors after a little punching of hats and indiscreet use of paper collars and other appurtenances and holding stick guns just as they did in the picture, joined the march to the candy kettle. The delightful intimacy and informality of that experience would be almost impossible to sense in a larger school. Older children ac-