Rural and One-Room Schools

What the Smallest Schools Lacked

When educators assailed the smallest schools, they stressed the problems of an “ungraded” organization. Having students of widely different ages in the same room precluded good teaching, most experts agreed.

Only an extraordinary teacher could provide suitable instruction to students far apart in academic preparation and social development. What the students shared—similar neighborhoods, common relatives, comparable experiences on the farm—mattered less than their differences, the experts said. Thus, students should be grouped by age in separate rooms.

Educational leaders thought that in high school, students should also be classified by ability and interests. It seemed impossible for a small school to do that. According to an influential report in 1959 by former Harvard University President James Conant, a decent high school needed at least 400 students in order to offer rigorous courses in mathematics, science, and foreign languages. Yet on the eve of World War II, 75 percent of the nation's high schools had fewer than 200 students.

The smallest schools could not afford the facilities that a “modern” school offered. A large school could more readily provide the space and equipment for vocational coursework, especially home economics for girls and various shops for boys. Art, music, and drama could be taught in small schools, but the buildings lacked ample space for storage and performances. Athletics, the fastest-growing part of the curriculum during the enrollment surge of the 1930s, required extensive space, indoors and outdoors.

Rooms to serve the entire school could be justified if hundreds of students used those costly sites. Libraries, lunchrooms, auditoriums, swimming pools, and study halls were otherwise considered too expensive. The economies of scale seemed compelling, although educators acknowledged that financial savings were not guaranteed by larger size. The per-capita annual operating costs of new and larger buildings were sometimes less, sometimes more, than those of smaller schools. The educational advantages of larger schools were worth the price, educators argued.

Careers Paths That Led to the Cities

Most small rural schools could not match the professional attractions of a teaching career in a larger school and district. The chance to specialize in one subject was rare in the small school, and educators had little respect for the notion of the teacher as [Page 664]generalist beyond the elementary grades. To save money and avoid surprises, most rural school boards hired young women who lived in or near the area. Typically, they taught for a few years and then either married or moved. Few supervisors were close at hand to lend assistance. The collégial support that was available—specialists from the state department of education, summer “institutes,” college courses—was sparse and patchy, in part because many officials and professors yearned to close small schools, not find ways to improve them.

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