TechIntersect

A century ago, country schools were a common way for students to get an education. This photo shows my grandmother Peg Rickley and her Sunny Slope School constructed of Flint Hills limestone in 1876 near Wakefield, Kansas.

Ira Socol sent me a draft of a paper he is working on a while ago, and I had to chuckle because in it he mentioned that we think of the country school as a model of successful education in America, although hardly anyone we know still living attended one. I laughed because practically everyone in my family before my generation attended country schools! My mother, my father, my grandparents all went to one-room schools out in the country. In Kansas, the last of the country schools did not close until the 1960’s, and both of my parents and their parents grew up the children of farmers.

Why do we tend to think of the country school as a high point in American education? Often the teachers were unqualified (at least by today’s standards) with only an 8th grade education themselves. Yet somehow the children learned. In fact, when I look through the 1897 Geography book I have, I am amazed at the complexity of information presented in it.

Perhaps some reasons these schools were successful is that they were small and they did not differentiate by age or grade levels. The students would often have the same teacher for consecutive years. The kids could learn the ways of the teacher, and the teacher could know each student as well. This seems to me a very advantageous arrangement for learning. Nowadays, kids rarely have the same teacher for consecutive years.

I think I would like to learn more about the country school model, especially since I’m in the heart of one-room schoolhouse country. What successful practices were used then that we could adapt to our modern schools? What were the disadvantages they had back then? And could technology help to alleviate some of those disadvantages? What do modern rural schools have in common with the one-room country schools that no longer exist? All fascinating questions to ponder as I move closer to settling on a dissertation topic.

Am I alone in personally knowing some students and/or teachers of country schools, or do you know of any? I think I should start compiling a list of these people and talking to them. After all, this week my contact list grew one person shorter. On May 19, 2009 (her 68th wedding anniversary) my grandma Peg joined my grandpa in heaven. We buried her in a prairie cemetery not far from the Sunny Slope country school.

These photos were made when we visited the school with Grandma in the fall of 2006. The school is well maintained by the Wakefield museum, and tours can be arranged by contacting the museum at 785-461-5516 or wakefieldmuseum@eaglecom.net.

In memory of Josephine Marguerite (Peg) Rickley 1918-2009

This spring I have been researching about the origins of federal aid to education—the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958 in the Eisenhower Presidential Library. If you care about No Child Left Behind, whether you agree or disagree, you should know that all federal aid to education including NCLB can be traced to the original federal education funding of NDEA in 1958.

Because the launch of Sputnik spooked the American public, supporters of federal aid to public schools were able to get the ball rolling by tying school funding to a perceived national crisis; thus the National Defense Education Act was born.

Not everyone bought into the need for federal funding for schools. For instance Sen. Barry Goldwater wrote the following brief opinion about the NDEA:

This bill and the foregoing remarks of the majority remind me of an old Arabian proverb:

If the camel once get his nose in the tent, his body will soon follow.

If adopted, the legislation will mark the inception of aid, supervision, and ultimately control of education in this country by Federal authorities.

To continue the precedent of state and local control, and to ensure its passage, the law was very explicit in ensuring that the federal government would have no control over public schools.

Sec. 102. Nothing contained in this Act shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution or school system (National Defense Education Act of 1958)

Indeed the law did pass when President Eisenhower signed the bill. Here is the statement he made at the time:

You will notice that Ike was also a strong supporter of decentralized control of schools. He notes that the NDEA was only intended to be a short-term remedy to a national crisis when the nation needed more scientists and technologists, with a planned end for the program after four years.

The NDEA did have the intended effect, spurring great strides in math & science education. America ultimately did land a man on the moon, and survive the threat of the cold war.

Kansas primary school students studying science with hands-on experiments.

Kansas High School students learning “Binary Numbers,” the basis upon which digital computer work.

However, since 1958 federal aid to public schools has remained a steady part of the public school landscape—but the original hands-off, decentralized control aspect has become a distant memory. Under federal direction, our schools have become focused upon narrow standards, primarily in math and reading. When I asked my daughter’s teacher about the science that they do in first grade this year, he told me he that the time available is limited because of the push for testing in math and reading.

Also interesting, my daughter recently mentioned to me that her “painting shirt” was wasted this year because they didn’t get the paints out even once this year! This is not a complaint against her teacher at all. He does an excellent job. I spent a day watching him work, and I may go back again soon if I can work it into my schedule before school lets out. But this is a very strong complaint against a system that I believe is headed down the wrong path.

I’m not worried for my daughter. She lives in a very enriched home environment. We think about and talk about a broad variety of things at our house. I am worried for the kids who don’t live in such a place, who depend on the school to provide an excellent, broad education. All of the focus on the testing and accountability isn’t heading us in the right direction.

I know plenty of people think the same way. But what can be done when all of our schools are dependent upon federal dollars to operate and those federal dollars come with strings attached? I wonder if the congressional leaders who voted in 1958 for that first NDEA law could see where we are today, would they have still passed the bill that ultimately changed the way American schools operate?

Tags: NCLB, NDEA