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What Ever Happened to the One-Room Schoolhouse?

McClean County Museum of History
/
Bloomington Pantagraph

One-room schoolhouses used to be the thriving heart of American agricultural communities. When children weren’t learning their three Rs, the buildings served as community centers and a town meeting place. Sadly, as reported by the Bloomington Pantagraph,most of these schools have gone the way of steam locomotives and wooden silos.  The closures began 70 years ago during the first wave of American public school consolidations. The consolidations came as a result of a boom in infrastructure projects after World War II.

Formerly muddy county roads were replaced with “hard” roads, both paved and graveled. As a result, school buses could now safely transport schoolchildren farther.

The mechanization of agriculture also contributed to the closings, as it now takes far fewer people to harvest an acre than it did a century ago. Often, the land the schoolhouses were built on now contains only corn or wheat.