"Beacons On the Prairie: One-Room Country Schools In Kansas"

A Moment in Time

Kansas Historical Society

A monthly series from the Kansas Historical Society

They stood shaded by the sunset-colored leaves of a cottonwood or oak or amid a sea of russet-topped bluestem square, solid, and familiar, clearly visible in the surrounding countryside, the hub of the rural community they served. They were only about three miles apart, so on crisp fall mornings the chiming of their bells mingled on the wind as they called their pupils to come. Their names were prairie poetry Honey Creek, Chicago, Glen Sherold, Buzzard Roost, Good Intent, and all the Pleasants: Valley, View, Vista.

They were one-room country schools.

Education has always been important in Kansas, even before there was a Kansas. When this region was still designated as Indian Territory, church groups in the eastern part of the country sent missionaries to the area to found manual labor training schools for the various tribes Potawatomi, Kaw, Iowa, Sac and Fox to teach the Indian children not only to read, write, and speak English, but to dress and act like white people and to do the work white people thought was important: cooking, sewing, cleaning, farming, and raising domestic animals.

Although it is questionable if white schools served the best interests of Native Americans, they were the seeds of education in Kansas, and they established our educational tradition.

In 1854 Kansas became a territory of the United States, and former Indian lands were opened to white settlers. As these settlers arrived, almost as soon as they had unhitched their oxen and unloaded their covered wagons, almost before there were children to attend them, a rough-hewn school district was formed and a school building erected. The founding of a school declared the settlers' intent to stay and make a home on the untamed prairie. Most of the parents who established these schools and supported them, although not themselves well-educated, recognized that education was vital to the success of their children and the betterment of their communities.

Many of these early schools were "subscription" schools. Parents organized the school, provided a place to hold class, and selected as a teacher anyone who had some "learning" and would agree to take the position. Parents who chose to send their children to school paid the teacher a fixed tuition usually a dollar or a dollar and a half per pupil per month thereby "subscribing" to the education. Terms were three-month sessions with a two-week vacation between terms. Teachers were hired for one term at a time, making it entirely possible for a pupil to end his or her school year having been under the tutelage of three different people. Textbooks consisted of whatever books a child's parents may have brought with them from the East ranging from a volume of poetry to the family Bible. This discontinuity in teachers and teaching materials, although well intentioned, could not ensure progress in education.

Statehood in 1861 finally brought the beginnings of an organized educational system. Slowly, by borrowing ideas from the laws of other states and trying them on to see what fit, what to keep, and what to throw away, the lawmakers of Kansas began to form a useful, functioning school system. In a new, still mostly rural state whose communities were small and widely scattered, the linchpin of the educational system was the one-room rural school.

And the linchpin of the one-room school was its teacher. The teacher was almost always a female, and if a female, invariably single (the unmarried state frequently being a stipulation in the teaching contract). She often had been raised in the very school district in which she taught. Even if the teacher initially were new to the area, she made it her duty to get to know all the families in the district, and they all took turns inviting her into their homes for a meal or to spend the night.

The teacher held a respected position in the community. Next to parents and the preacher, the teacher probably had more influence on her charges than anyone else. Whether she liked it or not, she was a role model and had to remain aware of that at all times. Therefore a teacher caught smoking, drinking, and sometimes even dancing was greatly frowned upon by the community.

Every morning the teacher arrived at the schoolhouse between 7:30 and 8:00. School "took up" at 9:00, and in that hour or so beforehand, she had to sweep out the school, clean the blackboards, build up a fire in the coal stove, and make sure she was ready to teach ten different subjects to fifteen different children in eight different grades.

The children who attended rural schools came in all ages, from five to seventeen. The little ones came as soon as they could because often there were even smaller ones at home, and mother sent all the children she could to school, along with older brothers and sisters, to divide up the work of looking after so many. The big boys, really men, came in the winter months or between harvests, squeezing in two or three months of schooling before going back to work on the farm. Thus it often took boys longer than girls to complete eight grades.

Almost everyone who attended school came on foot. School districts were organized and schoolhouses placed so that no child would be more than two-and-a-half or three miles from school. Usually, however, students lived no more than a mile from school. With several brothers, sisters, and friends making up the group, it was a pleasant trip down the dusty roads or through pastures that in the fall might sport bluestem grass taller than the budding scholars. On cold winter days, however, sharp winds and snow made the trip seem longer and less appealing. On these days luckier children made the trip on horses or in horse-drawn wagons.

The school bell rang at 9:00 a.m., and the school day began with opening exercises of singing, prayer, saluting the flag, and maybe a reading by the teacher. The pupils were divided by age and ability into eight grades. Subjects studied included spelling, reading, penmanship, grammar, geography, mathematics, physiology and hygiene "with special reference to the effects of alcoholic stimulants and narcotics" American and Kansas history, literature, agriculture, and sometimes art and music. Each class would be called forward to the recitation benches in front of the room, and the teacher would ask each pupil a few questions to make sure they had their lessons prepared. Not only were older children asked to help younger children, but in hearing what the other classes were learning, a youngster often picked up more advanced school work.

Even when Kansas supported its greatest number of school districts, around the turn of the century, voices were calling for the abolition of the rural school. Educational experts claimed that rural schools provided an inferior education, even though rural schoolteachers almost uniformly sought continuing educational opportunities through summer school programs at state normal schools, and even though rural school pupils frequently bested city school children at county-wide spelling and ciphering contests. The social and educational influence of the rural schools might have won out against calls for their dissolution had not the two World Wars finally changed the face of rural Kansas. Young people went off to war or to jobs in the cities and frequently never returned to live on the land. The population and tax bases for the rural schools dwindled away, and by the early 1960s statewide school district consolidation was nearing completion.

From the mid-1800s into the twentieth century, anyone who attended school in Kansas likely spent at least part of his or her school years in a one-room country school. Although overseen by county and state governments, each school was still founded, funded, built, and patronized by the people in the rural community it served. Children attended the same school as their parents and grandparents, with the children of neighbors and relatives. Not only was the school a place where children were nurtured and taught what they would need to help them succeed, but the building served as the center of the community as a place where the parents voted and attended school meetings and where the entire community enjoyed social gatherings, was exposed to culture and literature in the form of visiting lyceums and lecturers, and sometimes even worshiped on Sundays. The school housed the activities that called people together to form a community and bonded them as an extended family. The identity of the rural community became inextricably linked with its school. Today the country school continues to be a powerful cultural symbol and a fond memory of childhood and community to many Kansans.

Today at the Kansas Historical Society, children can return to the one-room classroom with "Rural School Days: Kansas in 1920." The four and one-half hour living history activity is held weekdays during the school year at the Stach school on the grounds of the Kansas History Center in Topeka. Fourth- and fifth-grade students can act as pupils of seventy years ago, sit at wooden desks, practice penmanship, participate in a spelling bee, and enjoy games such as "Pom Pom Pull Away." For more information about the "Rural School Days" program, call the Kansas Historical Society at 913-272-8681, ext. 414.

"Beacons On the Prairie: One-Room Country Schools In Kansas," by Sara J. Keckeisen, is reprinted from the summer 1995 issue of Kansas Heritage. Kansas Heritage and Kansas History are membership benefits for those who join the Kansas Historical Society, a nonprofit organization. For more information about membership in the Society contact the membership coordinator at the Kansas Historical Society, 6425 SW Sixth Avenue, Topeka, KS 66615; 785-272-8681; TTY 785-272-8683.