Description
Book SynopsisThis qualitative study of one-room schools in a rural Virginia county examines twenty interviews with people who attended or taught in these schools and analyzes them for traits that can inform modern education. They have much to teach us and much that modern teachers can integrate in their own philosophies.
Trade ReviewSusan Leist has produced an exceptional 'first hand' account of the rural one-room school experience in early twentieth-century Virginia. This accessible, indeed — graceful — volume goes a long way toward filling a scholarly void created by our cultural propensity to examine urban circumstances before all others. -- Paul Theobald, Ph.D., Woods-Beals Endowed Chair and professor of educational foundations, SUNY College at Buffalo
In times when schools and educators are under fire, too often the impulse is to imagine a rhapsodic past while chasing tomorrow's next idea to fix the present. Perspective is lost. But this portrayal of one-room schools in rural Virginia restores perspective through its rich account of another time in America's educational history. In that time, school was a source of exciting possibilities for both teachers and students. This is not a melancholic journey to a past that never existed; rather, the voices that Susan Leist captures here speak with poetic authority about one-room experiences. Children and their teachers bent the arc of history then with their belief in each other and the learning made possible in an intimate community. Modern-day educators can learn much by placing themselves in this American story and rediscovering their inheritance. -- Margo A. Figgins, Ph.D., associate professor, The Curry School, University of Virginia
