The One Room School Revisited

 Monday, September 15, 2014 at 12:50PM

The One Room School Revisited

 

Bill Kauffman in the Wall Street Journal article, In One Room, Many Advantages, examines Professor Jonathan Zimmerman’s book, Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory.  In 1913 half of the nation’s school children attended one of the 212,000 single teacher schools. By 1960 progressive educationists, growing cities and centralizing pressures reduced the total to 1%.  Zimmerman quotes Delaware school consolidators telling small school supporters that “modern education...is less romantic and more businesslike, more formal, more exact, more specialized, done according to tested methods and a standard schedule.” In the name of “efficiency” small town traditions were buried in a maze of regulations and policies.  Big was better, and it was only a bus ride away.  The days of walking to school were over. From 1930 to 1970 nearly two-thirds of all school districts were eliminated through the process of consolidation.  Parents and neighbors on a small town school board were incapable of keeping up with the new methods and policies. New Deal journalists filed stories depicting run down one room schools with students receiving inferior educations. Zimmerman quotes a rural mother who said that “individuality will be lost, the pride taken away from our school and our teacher gone.  Haven’t the parents who bear the children anything to say?”

 

Well, homeschooling parents have something to say.  According to the Institute of Education Sciences over 1.5 million students which is 2.9% of the school age population are now home schooled.

From a 2007 survey:

36% (of the students) of the homeschooling parents stated a desire to provide religious or moral instruction.

21% stated a concern about school environment such as safety, drugs and negative peer pressure.

17% stated a dissatisfaction with academic instruction.  

14% named family time, finances, travel and distance.

7% decided to provide a nontraditional approach to education.

5% named health problems or special needs.

 

Researchers have now discovered the advantages of a one room school.  A child is not a statistic on a government chart.  In a one room school a child is an individual and given the attention and recognition a child deserves.  A child can move at a pace that fits their ability and motivation. A child in a one room school interacts with older and younger children in a real world environment and is not some number locked in an age group in a remotely controlled warehouse where Progress is the latest buzz phrase (Back to Basics - President Reagan 1981-1989, Nation at Risk 1983, No Child Left Behind 2001, School Choice, President Clinton’s Technology Literacy Challenge, President Clinton and Nationalized Standards and Common Core)  and Bigness is the justification for government and for big business control.  

 

Marketplace Mission Learning Center on Marco Island, Florida, offers a one room school of no more than seven students where students receive attention and recognition, move at their own pace through our Ignitia  online curriculum and interact with students at different grade levels. Another option is homeschooling.  You can be the teacher.