They stand as monuments to a bygone era.

Silent witnesses to the dreams of people who knew the value of education.

Once, these log, brick and frame structures were sources of pride: focal points for community gatherings, but today, most are gone, returned to the earth as dust and soil.

Some that do remain exist as hollow shells, sad reminders of their glorious past.

Still, others continue to serve practical purposes, and are put to use as dry storage for farmers.

If you look closely enough, you can see that some live on as homes, and township halls.

Remarkably, a few have been preserved, as reminders of simpler times, times that still glow with the warmth of nostalgia for those who recall those seemingly endless days of long ago.

Hello, I'm Jim Blue.

Let me take you back to school, as we remember the Days of the One-Room Schoolhouse It's hard to imagine what it was like back when the first one-room schoolhouses were built in the area.

They were log cabins with few amenities other than the oiled paper that covered the openings that served as windows and benches hewn from logs.

An example is preserved here at Sauder Village in Archbold, Ohio.

When this was built, the Great Black Swamp was not entirely tamed and living in the rugged areas between villages and towns meant a life of isolation, but there was a plan for education, and it was unique to this newly settled frontier land of a relatively young nation called the United States of America.

Three ordinances passed by the Confederation Congress of the United States established the framework for the settlement of what was then known as the Northwest Territory.

It was the second ordinance, passed in 1785 that related to education.

"The ordinance said that if one section of each congressional township had to be available either to support or be a site for education, so interestingly enough the origin was federal in nature and so when we hear the federal government coming in to education, it was indirectly there early on, because in a lot of the states it was private education or religious, perocrial education and then when you got in these agricultural regions where they didn't have the towns or the cities for either the private or the city schools then there was a need in the rural areas, and so you had the one room school that often was thirty by fifty feet, covered grades one through eight and that provided the basic education for the children in that area and there all within a couple miles, even though early on they had to walk.

The little red schoolhouse was a very practical means of not only providing education but helping the integration in the American society, as we know it.

My father is one of eight boys in the farm in west central Ohio, two of them eventually got to high school, all the others did finish the eight grades but only two could go to high school.

Which was not unique.

My father taught in a one room school for a year and I that know my mother and four sister, all five of those, they taught school.

The one room school in the Midwest really became the forerunner in one of the great "emphasis" towards the emerging of our public education system, as we've known it to become and hope it will remain.

In the early 1800's some of the original log one-room schools were subscription schools that operated on a pay as you go system.

If your child missed a day of school, you didn't have to pay for the missing day of education.

Other one-room schoolhouses doubled as churches on the weekends.

A good solid building was a valuable commodity, and constructing a school was a task that required many hands.

With labor scarce, back in 1838 in Chesterfield Township, which would eventually become apart of Fulton County, Indians were used to build a school.

Eventually, log structures gave way to brick and frame structures.

"To be built in sub district number 3, Liberty Township.

The house to be built 26 x 36 feet in the clear, the story must be 13 feet high also in the clear, the foundation must be of stone 18 inches thick.

The walls must be built with good lime and sand mortar, the stone and brick to be the best had in the county.

The windows and doors to arched in the wall above.

The floor to be of good oak or ash an inch thick when dressed flowed and grooved, not more than 5 inches wide and well nailed down.

These are some of the specifications laid out by the school board members of Liberty Township in Putnam County on July 16, 1881 for construction of a new one-room schoolhouse.

It was a replacement for an older structure that was subsequently given to a local man, likely returning it to the family that donated the land in the first place, five months after accepting the lowest bid, the schoolhouse was finished, and the total amount paid to the builder (cash register sound).

A similarly sized schoolhouse was built much more inexpensively in Fulton County in 1896.

The cost for materials and labor (cash register sound) .

One has to wonder if corners were cut, or the other builder secured himself a much larger profit.

Construction of one-room schoolhouses was done almost exclusively by local contractors, but by the similarity of design, you might wonder if standardized blueprints were used or if a single builder worked his way across the state.

This was not the case until later, when efforts were made to standardize the buildings.

Even though the designs were simple and dictated by function, many interesting architectural details found their way into the rectangular boxes; and recessed doorways, and cloakrooms, and cupolas were not uncommon.

For sanitation and privacy, most one-room schoolhouses had two outhouses near the far edge of the lot.

One was designated for use by the boys and the other for the girls .

"Two-holers", as they were called were designed with body size in mind and could accommodate youngsters on one side, and older children and adults on the other.

Fresh water typically came from a pump or fountain on site, but some schools had no wells of their own, and so the teacher or an designated student needed to trudge to the nearest well on a neighboring farm and fetch back a fresh pail of water every morning.

During breaks, students were permitted to drink a dipper of water each, and what they did not swallow was returned to the bucket.

When one person became ill, the whole school ended up with the same malady.

Interestingly enough, some schools in Fulton County went without a well for reasons other than financial.

Fears of creating an attractive campsite for gypsies passing through the area lead some to believe that a well might provide water to a passing caravan.

Despite, the perceived threat of gypsy visitation, school was never cancelled.

It went on without regard to rain, sleet, snow or hail.

There were no delays for fog and school was never let out early.

The earliest schools divided their year into two terms winter and summer, but later a three-term calendar was devised to reflect the rising and falling of student attendance.

A fall term of two months, a winter term of four months, and a spring term of two months, allowed children with duties on the farm during the fall and spring an opportunity to receive half a year's education.

This gave them a chance to complete school eventually, although it might take twice as long as their classmates that attended full time.

They might even end up being older than their teacher!

The school day began around 9:00am for the children, with the teacher having arrived much earlier to stoke the fire and prepare the classroom.

A Pledge of Allegiance, and a prayer were the first order of business, and then students would check the chalkboard to see what work to begin until their grade was called to the recitation bench in the front of the room.

The textbooks the children used, once they became available, were written in a way that allowed students to progress at their own pace.

The McGuffey Reader was widely used, as well as the McGuffey Speller.

Before these books were published in 1836, students were taught with whatever books were available to them.

Many a lesson came from the family Bible or other texts that were handed down from generation to generation.

Before paper became cheap and easily obtainable, children used individual slates to do their schoolwork.

It seemed a waste of paper to have them do work that would be graded in class only to have the sheets thrown away later, so the use of slates continued long after 1900.

Recess was granted for 15 minutes in the morning, and it was usually just long enough to get in a game of Tag, Crack the Whip, or Red Rover.

When the teacher rang the bell, it was time to return inside, and get back to work.

Lunchtime came promptly at Noon, and the students would be dismissed to get their lunch pails; the meal might include a cold sandwich, a hard-boiled egg and a cookie.

cold sandwich, a hard-boiled egg and a cookie.

Because they had a whole hour, more involved games could be played.

The afternoon lessons were interrupted by another 15-minute recess, with the school day coming to an end at 4 o'clock.

One room schoolhouses had official labels, but most people knew them by different names, usually ascribed to the family who donated or sold the land to the school board for construction of the school, but sometimes the name was taken by a nearby geological feature or a settlement.

Certainly the names weren't colorful than the official sounding "District 3" and the like.

"I'm Ray Lewis I grew up six miles east of here and basically my knowledge is in the next township of Big Lick.

A lot of them had a name but they all had a number.

In Big Lick Township that started to the northeast corner, just south of west independence Big lick number one, but it also went by the name of whoever gave the ground to that neighborhood.

And you come down the road and there was Rupman School, and that was one of them.

They quit using it, and it went back to the farmer and he opened the doors like that and he would knock both the walls out then they use it for storage for machinery.

That one a few years ago somebody burned that fence along there, fire got up there and these floors they use to oil them and the school building isn't there anymore.

But that's.it happens, and then you come down to Big lick number three.

That's called the Popgun school.

Why?

I often wanted to try it, they said elderberries stem/stocks, you can cut them open, use something to push that inside that pith out of there and then you made another smaller one, you put a little plug out here and hold that there.

There's ram rods sitting out there hit it and it will pop, popgun and they said they had the distinction of making the best popguns around.

One school over south, Marshee, it's called the Frogging School, because they're a lot of frogs in it.

But it was one school in Big Lick Township and that was Big lick number six and it never had any other name.

If you ever drive the back roads of Northwest Ohio, you might be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of vanishing history.

One-room schoolhouses were scattered across the region by the hundreds.

Now it's easy spot to brick ones.

The wood structure on the other hand are a bit harder to identify, as a matter of fact, some hardly resemble the original structures, especially if they've found a new life as a private home.

Hi my name is Kathy Gerken and Welcome to my schoolhouse.

This is our living room and we just kind of basically did cosmetic changes in here, painting and carpeting.

This is our home office, which started out as my husband and I bedroom, and we converted it into an office once we got the bedrooms upstairs done.

From here were going to the kitchen and this is the only room in the house that we completely gutted and started over.

The walls and everything in here were pretty bad; we put new flooring down, a new ceiling.

When we redid the kitchen and tore the walls out we found that cup, we don't have any proof but it could have been used by the school children, because they always shared a cup.

We found a pair of men's shorts stuffed in the chimney, which we figured maybe they were trying to keep the cold out.

This side of the house is really cold and from what we were told the chalkboard was over on this wall, over here.

And here is the pantry and over in this direction is our laundry room and next to that is our bathroom.

We have four bedrooms upstairs and this when it was a schoolhouse was all open, none of the walls were in.

We bought the house in 1998 and it was built in 1897 and was sold to Henry Watchman in 1941 and that's when they put in all the walls and the ceilings and made it a two-story home.

It was sold in 1978 to Bert Watchman, and that's who we bought it from in 1998.

Amazingly, two former students of the school can still remember their time here.

"Hazel Harmon Heicove.

Dorothy Miller Octsted.

You started with the first grade Oh, Yeah probably 1930, until I was maybe like twelve years old and then we moved.

The same thing, I started in the first grade We had like four kids going to school at one time, I had an older sister and an older brother and then there was a set of twins, so there four in the class, or in the school all the time.

I can just remember we had to walk to school, we had about a mile and a half, almost two miles, it would be two miles that we walked.

In the wintertime, unless it got really cold, we walked.

And then we would also walk home at night; but we always had a lot of fun.

It was fun going to school here, even though I was just about to take my second grade over again, because I wasn't keeping up with my twin brother.

They kept me in the same grade and I made it.

When we first started the school here, of course it wasn't her, it was me, I couldn't talk any English and we had to learn the English language here at this school.

I spoke Low German at home and we learned the English language when we came here.

When we go to the church school in the summer, I had to learn High German, but I did learn it.

One teacher couldn't understand the German Language, but she helped us out a lot, she would take time out to teach us kids the English language.

But that was just the one teacher we had.

That was Mrs. Maginald.

Well, they were outside toilets, weren't they Hazel.

Yeah You'll hold up one hand like this and the teacher would let you go and if you'd have more to do, you'll hold up two fingers and the teacher would let you go.

I think there was water in the schoolhouse, there was like a pale, like a long handle type of cup that would hang in there, and you would drink out of that.

But usually we would wait outside and each take turns to drink.

I must say we were always, nice acting, we weren't bitchy with I must say we were always, nice acting, we weren't bitchy with one another, you didn't fight with one another, you got along.

And the same way with the teacher, she got along with you.

Yeah, we'd fight with the boys, I can remember that.

You're not supposed to say that (laughter) But not really usually we played together.

At that time I didn't like boys, I had enough brothers, but to hell with them.

Yeah, I was going to say we always had.

We had women teachers usually Yeah, but they were always good teachers and you got along with them and they got along with you.

Fun, Yeah" you got along with them and they got along with you.

Fun, Yeah" As time marches on, the number of one-room schoolhouses continues to decline.

Weather and neglect conspire to erase them from the landscape, but there is an organization that hopes to raise awareness about one room schoolhouses and perhaps to preserve the remnants of an era in education that has passed into history books with little fanfare.

"My Name is Larry Helton and my official title is the founder of the society for the preservation of Ohio one-room schools and we shortened that down to S.P.O.O.R.S.

I started S.P.O.O.R.S in 1993 after we visited around a lot of different schoolhouses, took some pictures and started contacting some people, like the Ohio Historical Society, and found out they didn't have a whole lot either and I thought I'd just try something on my own and see what I can accumulate and also send them all my information as well.

Everybody kind of has this desire to know about the olden school days, especially they want to know about the school they went too, especially if its an older person.

Our general purpose is just make awareness, that this is important to keep and this is an important part of our history.

It's where our education system today, it's where there foundation is built upon and you'll find today that a lot of the schools are going back to some of that like smaller class room sizes, just like the one-room schoolhouse.

There's different sources that you can look into that will tell you can look into to tell you how many school houses were in Ohio, but it's countless.

Because you had the log ones, the woods ones, the brick ones and there was some openings and closings all the time, so there is really not a definite count.

Records weren't well kept; the people in the townships kept the records of their homes, so there is really no definite count of how many but it will be within the few thousands.

The last one closed in 2005, and that was up on North Bass Island and they closed just because of lack of students.

At the beginning when villages were like 'Hey' let's get a school, sometimes they will elect a board or sometimes it'll just be a group of men.

Usually you would look for a person to donate an acre partial of land, like a farmer's field.

Usually a farmer would donate a corner, the lesser used spot of his farm fields.

Then it could be local people building it, donating their supplies or charging for their supplies, if there was money.

Sometimes the village men would get together to build their school house, Other times if they had enough money they would hire an outside architect and contractor to come in and sometimes you'll see on the plaques on school buildings they'll have the architect's and builders name inscribed on the bottom.

It kind of just all depends, just like today, how much money that we had and what sources did we already have.

The original plan was for each township to build them one, two miles apart, that way no kid had to walk very far to get to school.

But of course, that wasn't obtained because of the funding and just not enough money or manpower to do so.

There are a few, here and there, that people have taken care of, kept their roof on and so long as it's still standing, that's kind of our goal.

It doesn't matter of the condition, it would be nice if they kept the roof and stuff in nice condition to preserve the building, just basically to everybody, just leave the building there and for future generations for people to see.

It's the roots of American education.

"I'm Dale Brightenball.

My great-grandfather settled here, some 150 years ago.

There was a need for a school, he donated the corner of the farm here and the schools were built here.

The Brightenball one room school was built in 1889 and closed in 1927.

I'd just thought it would be nice to restore the one-room school.

In 1878, there was a wooden school here and that wooden school was used for eleven years.

My grandmother and my grandfather went to that wooden school and my dad and his four other brothers went here to this school, so I've heard a lot of stories over the years about this school but myself I didn't have the experience of going here because I'm not that quite that old.

My grandfather had to buy it back from the valley Township and paid 500 dollars to get it back to the farm.

Then we would use it mostly for storage, mostly we would store native timber and stacked it in there.

Anything else that was on the farm that we didn't know what to do with it, we'd bring it down here.

We used it like that for many years; it was starting to go downhill, I guess it was called the labor of love.

I always had an interest in the school, I always liked history when I was in school and it just kind of grew on me to do this.

One of the first things I did was get this pump here back in working condition.

Then I worked on the windows that winter, about all the glass had been broken out the windows; got them up.

Step by Step it started to look like an improvement.

Then we got the porch built on and the bell tower back.

Then we worked inside, we saved the original floor and the walls we had to re-plaster about a third of it.

We tried to save everything we could.

I spent almost two years on the project before we had it complete.

It was all family-funded we didn't get help from anybody else and it did cost us some money but I think it's worth it.

I was surprised at the community interest, the public interest in it.

The first open house we had, there was over 200 people that came that day.

The first event that we had here was a reunion for the former students that went here and the last teacher that taught here was in her nineties and she was still able to come.

They just had a great time that day, reminisce and never dreamt they would be coming back to their old school.

One lady told me, when she was in third grade here and she was sitting and they were having their Christmas party and she said all of a sudden the opening to the attic opened up in the back of the school and here comes Santa Claus down out of the attic, she could still remember that.

Another one of the old guys who went here told me that, that one fall there was grasshoppers all over around here in the yard and the kids went out and caught them and took them in and let them loose in the school and he said there were grasshoppers jumping all in there; Just a couple of stories that actually happened here.

I'm starting to get more classes that will come and would spend the day here, and that is pretty neat the experience, they would dress up old-fashion, they'll pack their lunch, the school bus will leave them off down the road a little ways, to give them the experience of walking to school, I'm usually out there ringing the bell and I really get some nice letter, thank you letters of what the kids liked about it.

Some children say it was one of the best field trips they ever had.

We like to keep it in the family as much as we can and maybe it will be here for another generation or two, who knows, and a lot of kids will learn from this project.

The Zimmerman School in Bowling Green, Ohio, The "Little Red Schoolhouse" on the campus of Bowling Green State University, the Box School at the Wolcott Museum in Maumee, Ohio, The Oak Grove School in the Wildwood Preserve in Toledo, Ohio, the Hay Jay School in Williams County, the "Little Red Schoolhouse" in Findlay, Ohio, the Harvey School in Crawford County, the Merry School at the historic Lyme Village in Bellevue, Ohio, and the two schoolhouses at Sauder Village in Archbold, Ohio are all places you can go to get a taste of life in a one room schoolhouse.

One of the things you're sure to develop is a healthy respect for person in charge.

Teachers were the single biggest factor in a school's success or failure.

Both women and men were considered for the job, but there were restrictions.

Women were to be unmarried, and strict rules about behavior in and out of the classroom were required to be followed to the letter.

Some townships went so far as to restrict a female teacher from being seen unaccompanied in town, as this was considered lascivious behavior.

Only school board members were permitted to escort the young lady on shopping trips or social calls.

Male teachers were allowed to court two nights a week, but were not permitted to enter taverns or pool halls.

Attendance at church was mandatory.

Violation of the rules might result in immediate termination.

Not all educators were subjected to such a restrictive code of conduct, but all were hired and fired at the whim of the local school board.

It was a lot to ask for just $45 a month in 1910.

Many times the teacher also took on janitorial and building maintenance duties.

Lighting a fire before school then emptying the ashes at the end of the day, as well as cleaning lamp chimneys and trimming wicks were standard tasks for a teacher of either gender.

Oiling the floorboards, whittling nibs for writing, and general cleaning of the boards, erasers, desks and windows fell to the teachers, in most cases, but occasionally others were paid a token fee to perform these duties, and sometimes the teaches found a little extra in their pay for those non-teaching duties.

Classroom discipline varied, and was at the teacher's discretion.

Switches cut from nearby trees or leather straps were employed as needed for the most serious offenses.

Standing in the corner or wearing a dunce cap were two other forms of humiliation doled out as punishment, but generally speaking, students and teachers got along famously, and formed strong bonds because they spent the whole of their day together.

Mrs. Dorothy Rowan, who now lives in Hicksville, illustrates the unique relationship students and teacher at one-room schoolhouse teachers had, by telling this story.

It was a lovely April 1st, known to many as April Fool's day, and unbeknownst to her the boys in her school had devised a prank to mark the occasion.

They patiently waited for her to make a trip to the privy, then locked her in, hoping to get a break for the rest of the day.

It was the girls from the school that heard her pleas as she shook the door, and they saved her from her imprisonment, but what happened next is not what you might expect.

Instead of thrashing the boys and informing the parents about the hooliganism, she simply laughed it off, and went on about teaching the lessons scheduled for the rest of the day.

But from then on, she kept a close eye on the calendar to be prepared when the next time April first rolled around.

Teachers in the one-room schoolhouses usually stayed with a family that lived close to the school, unless they were lucky enough to reside near enough to walk or ride a horse to school.

Later rickety automobiles and even motorcycles carried teachers to and from school.

Transportation was a tricky issue for teachers and students alike.

In Hancock County, the Marion School is known as the "little red schoolhouse".

The Hancock Historical Museum looks after the restored site today.

"Well, I'm Henrietta Hayes and I come out here to give programs about what went on in the schools in the 1800s.

This one teacher, they did depend on the eighth graders a lot of the time to come, ring the bell and start the stove, so it'll be warm and she [the teacher] was staying with a family on the other side of the river over here, so she was walking to school because she had no transportation and noticed that during the night, the snow and ice had melted enough that there was water on the road, because it is low over there before it meets the three mile bridge and she was not going to walk through that water.

So she stayed there and wondered how she was going to get over here, because she knew it was time for school to start.

So she waited a while, and pretty soon a man came along with a pair of donkeys and mules and he had a wagon and so he says "I'm headed for Findlay and I'll just take you around that way, so you'll be in school.

"So she climbed up on the wagon and when he started then up, then they started a little ways into the water about this far upon their legs and of course it was ice water, so they stopped and he switched them and they wouldn't do anything.

So he rolled his pants leg up and he had on boots, and went into the water, got a hold of the reins, took them back out where there was no water, she got off and he said "I'm sorry I can't get you there.

"So she waited a while and a man came along with a pair of horses, and just a flat bed and he says, "I'm pretty sure the horses will go through".

So she had quite a time climbing on because there were no sides, but she did have posts at the corners.

She got on and they started up and the horses just got that far like the mules and so they stopped.

He tried to talked to them and they were waiting there for a while and pretty soon they slowly walked and of course they walked right back out of it and brought her over here but she had no idea what conditions things would be in because it was just about noon and she came in and she noticed the eight graders, were conducting the classes just like she had.

Brought them up here to the restation bench by class and things were in order.

She was so elated and of course she was about frozen to death, and she got close to the stove and she says, "You'll have recess all afternoon, that will be your reward.

"And then the children couldn't go out because it was too cold, so they played hide the thimble, hangman, just little things, racer tag, seat tag and things like that they have to do.

I thought that was an interesting thing that went on.

To get the school started, the day started, they would ring the outside bell that was up on top, and that would be rung about a half hour before school started and then the children would come across the field, not down the road.

If it was muddy, they'd come in with muddy shoes, or if it's snowing, covered in snow and of course they're here for the day.

They would come in, take off their shoes and stockings and at that time the stove was in the middle of the room, they would put their shoes and boots underneath there so they'd dry.

Now that was the only time that bell got rung, except that is was used like an S.O.S.

So you can see there is no telephone here, and so if a child got sick, or got hurt and the teacher needed help, they would ring the bell and there was always a family that was designated to come.

They went by months that they would come.

They would take the child to the doctor, or home or whatever needs to be.

Then they had a small bell that's on the desk over there and of course that was rung for in here, when the teacher needed attention.

Or when they had recess, which is morning and afternoon Fifteen minutes each, the teacher would go to the door, ring the bell so they could hear it; at that time there is not much traffic in front, this was the wagon trail.

The discipline had to be a little bit strict because the teacher could only talk with one group at a time and then they had to help each other, like if the children would come up here to the restation bench, I saw a record where said only five minutes they were up here.

They wouldn't have read too much, so when they go back to their seats then they could read on their own but if they come to a word they don't know they just raise their hands and some eighth grader would come and help them.

The main thing is they learn to help each other and that too they could listen, if some of them got through with their work, just listen to what was going on the rest of the time.

"In the early years, the requirements to become a teacher were very lax, but by the late 1800's prospective teachers were required to take a test known as the "Boxwell-Patterson Examination", commonly referred to as the "Boxwell.

"It was the equivalent of a high school proficiency test, and it was no cakewalk.

"What is the substance of the first article of the Constitution?"

"An agent received 3 and a quarter percent commission for selling 90 boxes of shoes at $12.70 per box.

What was his commission?"

"What are bacteria?

Are bacteria dangerous to the health of people?

"Write a sentence containing a transitive verb and parse the verb."

"Name the principal animals of South America."

"Use proper diacritical marks to indicate the sounds of letters in the following words."

I'm not certain of how many people today would pass.

Teacher preparation became more substantial in Ohio when the state legislature passed the Lowry Normal School Bill in 1910.

It led to the establishment of two new "normal" schools in Northern Ohio for teacher training.

One went on to become Kent State University, and the other became Bowling Green State University.

It was only 8 years earlier, in 1902 that Miami University and Ohio University added Colleges of Education, followed by Ohio State University in 1907.

It was all part of plan, which was never fully realized, to put a normal school in every county of Ohio, as the population and the need for well-educated one-room schoolhouse teachers, grew.

Regardless of their teacher's training, students in one-room schoolhouses looked up to their teachers.

Fond memories of time spent in class and at play abound.

At many schools it was customary for the teacher to give each student a gift card at the end of the year that contained a poem, blessing, or class picture, which became a cherished souvenir and the key to a treasure chest of memories.

In addition to being centers for learning for families that lived near by, one-room schoolhouses were social centers.

Several times each year, the general public was invited, as well as the immediate family members of students who attended the school.

Often times, box socials were held to raise money for school supplies.

Girls would prepare meals and stow them in decorated boxes, then young men would bid on the boxes of their favorite sweetie.

Occasionally the bidding would get high enough to raise eyebrows, when two beaus competed for the attention of a single girl!

There were advantages to having students in every class in one room, but this also had the potential to cause problems as well.

Perhaps its best to hear from some of the student's themselves.

Keep in mind that not all one-room schoolhouses were public or in rural areas.

Some were run by churches and were in cities.

"My name is Doris Kiefer Provost and I went to the one-room schoolhouse in Zone, Ohio 1935 to 1936 and 1936 to 1937, first and second grades."

"My name is Ray Wright, I went to a one-room school in Lorraine, Ohio, that was affiliated with our Lutheran church and I spent eight years there.

"There were about fifteen to twenty students in the whole school, grades one through eight.

In my grade in first grade, there were three girls.

My two older brothers had gone to the school, Harold was in the school when I started, probably five years ahead of me, Vernan had already gone on to public school.

My mother and all of her siblings went to that school in their generation and about a fifth of the kids in my school at the time were my cousins.

When I attended the one-room school I knew of no other schools, and I loved school, I always have.

So those two years, I think that's way I remember them so vividly, is that I enjoyed it so much It was a good experience; a lot of it was religiously based.

It was a Lutheran school.

I don't remember ever having homework Homework was not much of a problem, most of everything was able to be done in class because when you weren't up front you were at your desk and you were doing assignments, worksheets, getting things done pretty much In class.

So homework was when I when on to junior high, that was something that was new to me.

In Zone, there was a general store on one side of route 66 right across the road was the schoolhouse.

That was all that was there.

Zion was an urban school; most moms were stay at home moms, and the dads worked in factories.

I can't say that I enjoyed walking to and from school, but it was something that we had to do.

We did not have to walk up hill both ways, but when it snowed, we had to trench through the snow, there were no school buses to get us there.

My mother didn't drive, so it was with ride your bike or walk.

If there were snow on the ground sometimes my dad would hitch the horses up to a mud boat, which is like a sled.

It was a wagon with wooden runners on it and there were several children that lived between us and the school, so we all walked together or road together on this sleigh in the wintertime.

It was fun; we really had to bundle up.

In the city we were there all the time unless we were sick and had to stay at home.

Both of my teachers were male teachers and they were responsible for all the janitorial services around the school, the teachers would have to sweep the floor, if they didn't get there early enough they would sweep it while we were there.

They would also have to bring the wood or coal in for the furnace to keep the fire burning.

Our teacher was also the organist at church.

One of the things by being the organist, if there was a funeral in the Church he had to go to the funeral to play the organ for the funeral.

So that meant all the kids in the school were in the balcony and we were the church choir for the funerals.

So we had lessons in life as well as I death by going to that school.

The one job that I remember doing that I loved to do was clean the blackboard erasers.

And he usually let the first and second graders do that.

We would take them outside and bang them against the steps, I loved to watch the chalk dust fly out of them or we would hit them against the side of the school building.

But that was the only chore that I ever got to do.

In schools, usually the teacher had a problem send the kids to the principal office.

Well, he was also the principal so when there was a problem, he dealt with it right in the classroom.

If there was punishment for a child, you got punishment again when you got home.

Discipline could either be standing in the corner or it could be a whipping.

The parents did support the teacher one hundred percent.

Henry Reddinger was the teacher's name.

He was short in stature, but he wasn't a little guy and some of the students in the upper grades were bigger than he was.

I can remember very clearly.

Another story that I remember pretty vividly was very traumatic for me and the other two first graders One of the kids was acting up and I don't know what he was doing but he had him come up front and he was going to get a whipping.

Well, some of the older boys were kind of teasing us first graders, telling us they were going to toss us into the furnace, and we just laughed at them.

Mr. Reddinger was ready to give him a lesson, the kid started to take his belt off and he was going to defend himself.

Well all of a sudden two of the boys grabbed me first, one on either side, one had my arm and leg and the other one on the other side and they started swinging me back and forth.

The third boy opened the furnace door, I can still see those flames in that furnace, I'm surprised I survived.

Well, my sister and her friends came to the rescue, they were in the fifth grade and they attacked those boys like an army and beat on them.

Well they just dropped me and went on about their business.

I don't know how that turned out, I'm sure he didn't do anything to Mr. Reddinger.

I don't know where the teacher was at that point in time, possibly out getting water or something but that was a pretty scary thing.

We did not go near those boys; we stayed as far away from them as we could in a one-room school.

Nobody made fun of us, because we went to that little one room school.

It was a well-respected school in the area.

We lived in the city but most kids probably lived within a mile radius of the school.

We were able to get there by with walking or riding their bike to school.

If you needed to go to the bathroom, you had to raise your hand and get permission from the teacher and then you went outside to a privy or an outhouse as they were called.

We had two of the one for the boys and one for the girls.

There wasn't any toilet paper but there was a Sears' Roebuck catalog, you always tried to use the dull pages not the shiny ones.

I think the one-room school, the personal relationship between the one teacher and all the students is probably not going to happen in today's schools.

Consolidation of one-room schoolhouses occurred as populations grew, and the transportation in rural areas improved dramatically.

The closing dates for the schools vary, depending upon local conditions.

The economics of consolidation were very attractive, but the attachment to the tiny school down the road that educated an entire generation was strong.

Eventually, centralized education emerged victorious, and the era of the one room schoolhouse came to an end.

But there are lessons to be learned from the Days of the One Room Schoolhouse, lessons just as appropriate today, as they were a hundred years ago.

Sharing, caring, and cooperation will always have a place in the classroom.

The sense of community brought about by enduring hardships and celebrating successes with your neighbors is a building block in the foundation of a strong society.

And educating our children is the key to insuring a future we can look forward to, a present we can be proud of,