School’s in session! Whenever we think of the quintessential one-room schoolhouse experience, visceral images of a simpler time probably come to mind. Maybe there are nostalgic thoughts of Laura Ingalls being snowed in at her prairie school with her teacher and all of her classmates, or even carrot-topped Anne Shirley cracking her slate over the head of Gilbert Blythe. Perhaps there are less whimsical associations, such as students having their knuckles rapped by the teacher’s ruler until they bled, like Amy March after getting caught trading limes in class. Whether our perceptions are good or bad, the fact is that attending school used to be awfully different than how it is today. Here in Heritage Park, you can get a better sense of what it must have been like as you take a closer look at the Country School.

First of all, educating children on the frontier wasn’t exactly compulsory at the turn of the 20th century. Without the efforts of a man named W.E. Reynolds, this schoolhouse would’ve never been built. Walking from farm to farm, Reynolds gathered signatures for a petition to establish schools around the area for the few children that did live here. After a successful campaign, this school, known as School Number Two, was built in Douglas township by a homesteader named Lonnie Brennan, who had it ready for the 1904 Fall school term.

Of course, there was only one teacher for all eight grade levels, and there were as many as twenty-eight students at one time. That isn’t unusual compared to today’s class sizes, but their ages ranged from six to fourteen! The teacher’s job would have included more than simply teaching and discipline, too; they would have kept a fire lit in the stove, carried out the ashes, and any other janitorial duties. There were also the other three buildings around the school to worry about - the boys’ outhouse, the girls’ outhouse, and a stable!

For students here, the classes would have only been taught in ten minute increments, but they were responsible for helping the younger students learn the subject after them, so they had to pay close attention! The length of the school terms varied according to the weather, as well. They might attend for three months in the fall, not at all over the winter, and then two or three months more in the spring before having to help on their homesteads over the summer. And if it was freezing cold and blowing snow outside, remember, that’s where the bathroom was!

It’s estimated that only around one hundred students attended classes in School Number Two before it officially closed in 1939. The building was used for storage for a few more decades before being donated to the Heritage Park Foundation in 1973. Not wanting to lose the opportunity to show future generations what an early school on the Northern Plains would have looked like, the schoolhouse was moved to Heritage Park and lovingly restored by devoted groups and individuals. Many of the items inside are original to the Country School, like the teachers desk, or were salvaged from other one-room schoolhouses in the area. So, is it how you imagined it? How do your school days compare? Uh oh, the teacher’s coming - I better go!