Web Extra: Extended Interview with Jon Zimmerman
They’re a national icon, but little red schoolhouses were often cramped, cold and poorly managed. In this extended version of their interview, education historian Jon Zimmerman talks to host Brian Balogh about why Americans on both sides of the political spectrum romanticize 19th century one-room schoolhouses, and why this much-mythologized emblem represents America’s educational ambitions.
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School Days: A History of Public Education | BackStory With The American History Guys :
[...] Brian talks to education historian Jon Zimmerman about why we romanticize the Little Red Schoolhouse. Listen here. [...]
Quote -- September 8, 2010 @ 5:25 pm -
School Days: A History of Public Education | BackStory With The American History Guys :
[...] Little Red Schoolhouse Brian talks to education historian Jon Zimmerman about why we romanticize the Little Red Schoolhouse. Listen here. ___________________________________________________________________________________ [...]
Quote -- September 8, 2010 @ 6:21 pm
Interesting that many of the one-room schoolhouses were not red at all, but white or unpainted. My favorite one room schoolhouse is in Bristol, Maine–called the Rock Schoolhouse because it is actually built from slabs of granite. Bet that was cold in a Maine winter!!
QuoteThanks for the response, Kristine. I’m trying to remember what color the schoolhouse was on “Little House on the Prairie–” (Brian’s touchstone for all things historical, he tells us…). You know, my grandparents lived right near the Old Rock Schoolhouse in Bristol, and I remember it always struck me as somewhat jail-like when I was a kid. Wouldn’t be at all surprised if 19th-century kids felt the same way…
QuoteAs a young child in the early 40s, I went to a one-room school — Morewood School, on the south side of Pittsfield, Massachusetts — which was indeed red. But my grandmother taught in a one-room school in Landaff, New Hampshire in the late 19th century, and it was blue. [According to my father it was/is known as The Little Blue Schoolhouse.] She taught all eight grades, some of the students were almost as old as she was — and many were taller. Quite a challenge for a young woman who was only 20 — or maybe even younger!
Quote[A third generation in our family -- our oldest two daughters -- went to a one-room school in Westminster West, Vermont in the late 1960s. It is red, and continues to thrive -- but now as a two-room school.]