Figure 1.--we have found numerous images of rural one-room school houses and archived them on HBC-SU. Almost all are imageslf the children lined up in front of their school. Slow speed film in the 19th century made indoors photography virtually impossivle outside of the studios where most photographs were taken. Here is a rare portrait taken inside the classroom. Notitce teachers's nezat desk. We are surprised not to see the school bell. This may have been a two-room school as we don't see any of the younger children. The boys' modstly wear suits, we suspect mothers were yold the photographer was coming. The post-card back photograph is not dated, but we would guess was taken in the 1910s because the boys seem to be wearing knickers. The teacher's hat is another clue. Notice the girls' bobbed hair.

School level was another factor in school size. Elementary (primary) schools could be much smaller than secondary schools. Early elementary (primary) schools even in the 19th century could be very small. Actually smaller than Europen villge schools. This varied as to the type of school. The really small one-room schools of course meant primary school, but town high (secondary) schools could also be relatively small. Until after World War II, only a fraction of children attended secondary schools. Given that early-America was largely Protestant and the Government from the very beginning of the Republic made a commitment to public education. More children attended school in America than any other country except perhaps Germany, at least in proprtional terms. Still schools were small because most people lived in rural areas and had no way of traveling large distances to get to school. Thus you had to have a lot of small a schools to make schooling accessable to rural children. Unlike Europe, most rural families did not live in villages. The result was the iconic one room school rather than larger village schools. A good example is the School No. 8 in Blackhawk Country, Iowa. They had 11 childten. Small towns could have rather imposing schools, such as the Bancroft School in Bancroft, Iowa, These schools had to be phased out after World War II as they were very expensive to operate. The same was true of secondary schools, but they had to be located in towns, so there were no one-room secondary schools. This is why many rural primary schools had eight year (grade) programs. This meant children until the mid-20th century had to live in or move to towns. My dad in the 1910s had to move away from home on the family farm to attend secondary school (North Judson) and my grandparents opposed the idea. My mom lived in a town, but her high school graduating class was only 16 boys and girls in Mulberry, Indiana (1920s). When I sent to High school in Andandale, Virginia there were some 2,000 students and nearly 500 in my 1961 graduaring class. High schools of this size are today fairly standard, but there are schools of nearly 9,000 students.

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Created: 1:52 AM 10/1/2016
Last updated: 1:52 AM 10/1/2016