Some schools also served church congregations. These included a polling center, club meetings, and recreational events and celebrations such as harvest festivals, holiday celebrations, amateur theatricals, and musical recitals. The playground often had a baseball diamond where the locals played, and the school building served as a meeting center for various causes and events. The schoolhouse was often the social and political center of the school district. These country stores often became the center of the economic community, drawing in other retail operations and services. He also brought back the area’s mail, newspapers, magazines, and gossip. The store owner often ran a freighting business, bringing mail-order goods from larger towns. Area residents would trade butter, cream, eggs, bacon, fresh-killed game, hides, and furs to the local store for credit. The nearby store was a dynamic addition to the activities centered around the school. Because the schoolhouse was usually located on one of the better roads, someone usually tried to set up a country store near the school. It was not uncommon for the family who sold the land for the school to often live adjacent to the property and provide room and board for the teacher. These were often called “home schoolhouses,” meaning that the school was in the school district where they resided. Equipped with little more than a blackboard and a few textbooks, teachers passed on to their students knowledge of the “three Rs” - reading, writing, arithmetic, and cultural values. The school teacher, sometimes not much older than her students, also served as a nurse, janitor, musician, sports instructor, and more for less than $50 a month. At that time, there were no graduating from country schools - students attended until they were ready to quit. Many continued until they were 18 to 21 years old or even older. Students worked as far as possible each year, continuing where they left off in the following school session. Generally, the older boys and girls went to school only during the winter when they could be spared from farm work. Many students were foreigners who quickly learned to speak, read, spell, and write English.Īlthough the minimum term was three months, it was usually made a little longer for the benefit of the younger children. They traveled to school on foot, on horseback, or in a wagon. The children who attended ranged in age from five to 21 and endured the difficulties of frontier Kansas, including prairie fires, cattle drives, and dust storms, to get an eighth-grade education. They were called names like Prairie Flower, Bazaar, Rocky Glen, and Good Intent. Over the next century, white frame or native stone one-room schoolhouses dotted the Kansas landscape. Afterward, a few school districts were organized, and schoolhouses were built, with the minimum school term designated at three months. In the early years, due to the violence of Bleeding Kansas, most schools were subscription schools that were not publically funded but were paid for by tuition charged to each pupil who attended.īy 1859, when Territorial conditions had become more settled, the Legislature passed a set of school laws that served as the basis of education in Kansas. Charles Robinson’s office in January 1855. In Lawrence, Kansas, when the town was only six months old, a school was opened in the back of Dr. In the summer of 1855, the first Territorial Legislature passed a law providing for establishing common schools, thus laying the foundation for our public school system. When Kansas was organized as a Territory, and the white settlers began to make their homes here, their children’s education became one of their first interests. The first schools in Kansas were the mission schools for the Indians.
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