I dropped into the one-room schoolhouse at the Fryeburg Fair this morning. This got me to wondering about the advantages of a small community of learners. We've all heard about how inefficient they are, about how larger schools provide more opportunities . . . but might there possibly be more ways of looking at a situation than through mere efficiency? Is efficiency the only measure of progress?
Wikipedia: One-Room School
The One-Room Schoolhouse Resource Center
Maine Memory Network: Otisfield Schoolhouses.
One Room Schoolhouses of Minot, Maine
History of Maine Education
Are there any one-room schools still in operation in Maine? If there are, I'll bet they have superb per student bandwidth for the Internet "Global Village."
2 comments:
Wouldn't it be easy to differentiate when you only have one classroom of students to work with. And isn't there a lot of research that supports multi-age classrooms? We used to have a "one-room schoolhouse" in Peru called the Heritage school, but I think that it closed this year due to financial problems. I think that you are right, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. We used to have a "one-room schoolhouse" in Peru called the Heritage school, but I think that it closed this year due to financial problems.
One of my favorite titles on Maine's MLTI iTunes U section is the Islesford video (#3 on the list) which is about a one room schoolhouse on Little Cranberry Island. Hats off to the teacher.
http://tinyurl.com/4yw4rl
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