Recently, I attended a lecture in a one-room schoolhouse named Granny Richardson Springs at Eastern Kentucky University. The schoolhouse was originally located in my hometown of Irvine, Kentucky and was moved to EKU in 1976 and is now fixed and refurnished for tours and lectures. In our discussion, we talked about how life was for the teachers and students as well as the importance of one-room school houses in the Kentucky educational system.
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Life in a One-Room School House
The experience of a one-room school house is much different than the modern age school, starting with before the students even arrive. Students would have to walk from their homes to the school each day, in any weather condition, to the nearest of the multiple schoolhouses in the surrounding area.
Above is a picture of how the schoolhouse was laid out, while a historically accurate building would've been without a projector and white screen. The desks decrease in size as they go to the front of the classroom, meaning that the older students would sit in the back and the younger would sit in the front. As the very beginning of the seats is a bench, where students would go for individual and group lessons.
At the beginning of the school day, students would help the teacher prepare, which would include getting coal for the stove in the middle of the room, going to the nearest spring or well to get water, and cutting down a switch for the teacher in case someone decided to act up that day (my grandfather told me that what he and the other boys used to do was cut a small, thin indention into the branch so that when the teacher went to smack them, the switch would break off). Here's a picture of my professor demonstrating just how intimidating a teacher could be with their switch and glare aimed at a student:
Moving on to having class in a one-room schoolhouse, the quality that made them so unique was that there would be every grade (usually 1-8 during that time) in the same room being taught by the same teacher. The limited space made for a very flexible form of instruction, as when the teacher wasn't giving a lesson to a few number of students in the front of the classroom, the other students had to drown them out and finish their own work.
There were many antique school books in Granny Richardson Springs except the one that was actually the most poplar in the historical time when student would have been educated there. A majority of the course material taught in these schools would come straight out of the bible as other resources were extremely hard to get but almost every kid or household had a bible for the students to study.
Importance of One-room Schoolhouses
One-room school houses are important as these schools hold so many memories of a decreasing generation. For instance, I only learned when I brought up the subject of one-room schoolhouses to my grandfather that the natural spring across the road from my house was the same place where her would go when it was his turn to get water for the day. I never would've known about this connection if I had never became interested in the history of these schoolhouses, but can continue to keep the memory alive now that I have found it.
Relics like Granny Richardson Springs are also important as they have a place in the Kentucky educational system to symbolize the origin and struggle for a proper education in rural communities. This struggle goes beyond having more difficulty than kids in cities with even walking and getting to school but also includes the content itself. Any textbooks that students would be lucky to have used in Granny Richardson Springs most likely were material from textbooks meant for urban cities. In some cases, students could not connect or relate to the instruction, so they were viewed as not smart.
Feel free to comment and share any stories of one-room school houses of yours or those that have been passed to you like mine was. The difficulties teachers and students alike went through to give and receive education deserve to be represented and remembered, and one-room schoolhouses are the perfect memorial.
For more information about Granny Richardson Springs: http://www.richmondregister.com/news/local_news/re...
