Small Wonder Little Red Schoolhouse in History & Memory [HC,2009]

Icons of America

by Jonathan Zimmerman

The little red schoolhouse has all but disappeared in the United States, but its importance in national memory remains unshakable. This engaging book examines the history of the one-room school and how successive generations of Americans have remembered—and just as often misremembered—this powerful national icon.Drawing on a rich range of sources, from firsthand accounts to poems, songs, and films, Jonathan Zimmerman traces the evolution of attitudes toward the little red schoolhouse from the late nineteenth century to the present day. At times it was celebrated as a symbol of lost rural virtues or America’s democratic heritage; at others it was denounced as the epitome of inefficiency and substandard academics. And because the one-room school has been a useful emblem for liberal, conservative, and other agendas, the truth of its history has sometimes been stretched. Yet the idyllic image of the schoolhouse still unites Americans. For more than a century, it has embodied the nation’s best aspirations and—especially—its continuing faith in education itself.

Genres: Education, History, Nonfiction

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Jonathan Zimmerman is professor of education and history, New York University. His previous books include Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century and Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools. He lives in Narberth, PA.

Reviews

[Bob Klein · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pleasant read, along the lines of an extended popular magazine article. Often someone would be quoted but not cited, so that "one prominent educator stated that, blah blah" would be completely unattributable. This is frustrating for an academic interested in rural issues in education--I want to know WHO said this--it's part of the story for me. That said, I had a fun time learning that the first mosque in the US was in a small rural town in North Dakota and other trivia. The underlying point of the book, made over and over and over was that the "little red schoolhouse" has become iconic, and almost transcendentally so, like Grandma and Apple Pie, in Americans minds. Conservatives, Liberals, Reformers, and Back-to-Basics advocates all use it as a reference to some imagined better time.

[A. Bowdoin Van Riper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Few Americans now alive attended a one-room schoolhouse. Yet, for most Americans, the image of a red-painted, white-trimmed wooden building with a small cupola perched atop its peaked roof instantly and unambiguously says "school." More broadly, it says "education" and "learning," to the point that department store back-to-school displays, educational websites, and the Department of Education all press it into service. It symbolizes a lost golden age of education in "the basics" to one set of onlookers, the tyranny of rote memorization and corporal punishment to another, and the systematic racial discrimination of the Jim Crow era ("separate" but never "equal" schools for black and white children) to a third.

Jonathan Zimmerman's brief, brisk book is a tour de force history of the one-room rural schoolhouse in America (not all of them were "little" and most were not red) and an incisive analysis of the layers of meaning that have been attached to it. Zimmerman is a historian and this is a scholarly book: firmly grounded in primary sources, and rich with the voices of the students, teachers, and townspeople whose lives bumped up against such schools. He gives shape and meaning to the complex story they tell without smoothing away its complexity in the interest of a more streamlined narrative. His central theme is that the little red schoolhouse has become a potent, protean symbol because its complex history – haven and hellhole, bastion of mindless tradition and hotbed of innovation – can support (almost) pundit willing to mine it selectively.

Zimmerman himself mines that history comprehensively and thoughtfully, and writes about it in smooth, graceful prose that makes Small Wonder an engaging read. Anyone interested in the history and politics of American education, or in the stories that Americans (collectively) tell about themselves, will find it fascinating.

[Doris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part of The Icons of America Series, this well researched and annotated history of "The Little Red Schoolhouse" presents a realistic picture of the rise and almost total demise of the the one-room schoolhouse, its place in the development of our current education systems and its standing as a nostalgic icon of a much romanticized past. An excellent, truthful, portrayal.

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It covers the history of schools in America and how they came to be what they are today. The author rambles on in some parts, but overall it was a fun read. It made me appreciate teaching in modern times!