Failure™ Magazine

The Little Red Schoolhouse

The distorted history of an American icon.

Written by Kathleen A. Ervin   Filed under History

What brought on the decline of the little red schoolhouse?
Urbanization and the development of the auto industry, which made it feasible for children to attend consolidated schools that drew from a wide geographic area. Also, reformers from the Progressive Era through the New Deal targeted the one-room school as a symbol of poverty and ignorance.

In the book you note that progressives and conservatives have different visions of the little red schoolhouse. How so?
Progressives see the little red schoolhouse as a symbol of what they call progressive education: activity-based (think spelling bees), cooperative, and tightly linked to the surrounding community. For conservatives, the little red schoolhouse symbolizes older virtues that America has supposedly lost: discipline, respect for authority, and religious faith.

Why has its wholesome image endured?
We’re all infected with nostalgia. We want to return to a world that was simpler and more stable than our own. We’re also ambivalent about progress. We like to think of ourselves as cutting-edge, but we worry about values and virtues that we are leaving behind.

Why is it difficult to get people to reflect on the negative aspects of one-room schooling?
Nobody likes a scold. If you have invested your psyche in a given view of the past, you want to hold onto it, and you’ll bridle when some carping historian says “it wasn’t really like that.”

Typically, what color were one-room schoolhouses?
They were white, which was the least expensive paint, and often went unpainted, reverting to a weather beaten gray. That was the cheapest option of all.

Is there any possibility that the one-room schoolhouse will make a comeback?
One-room schools? Doubtful. But smaller schools have made a comeback—the Gates Foundation has given them millions—and they, too, look longingly back to the little red schoolhouse. The small-schools trend reflects a historical reversal of early 20th century school consolidation: instead of combining different schools into larger ones, we’re breaking up large schools.

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