A New Look at Iowa's One-Room Schools

Download or read book A New Look at Iowa's One-Room Schools written by Sandra Host and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides in-depth details and stories of Iowa's highly successful Iowa Rural School System (1858-1966) and how it anchored the huge farm settlement (1870-1900) and helped shape the character of Iowa. During this 30 year period a million immigrant farm settlers doubled the population of Iowa and created new farms out of the tall-grass prairie that quadrupled the tilled acreage in Iowa to 35.5 million acres. Farmers built a school for every four square miles of farmland. While there are still people today who have fond childhood memories of attending one-room schools in the mid-1900's, most are unaware that 12,623 one-room schools were built in Iowa mostly during the height of the Victorian Age (1870-1900) or that they were linked together as part of a legislated state-wide system of rural schools that provided easy access for all children within a 2-mile walk from home. Willow Tree School in Richland Township, Sac County, Iowa serves as a representative of a one-room school during the time that the Iowa Rural School System operated. It is representative of other rural schools across Iowa because all were part of a progressive state-wide system with the same organization, regulations and Course of Study despite differences in nationalities and faiths. This book explains why Iowa's successful system of one-room schools served farm families so well for over three generations. The book contains 145 colored photographs of artifacts from the Iowa Rural Schools Museum of Odebolt. We invite you to get to know the individuals through their narratives that were associated with Willow Tree School past and present and let them take you to another time and place!