A brief look at the social settlement houses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the pioneers in community education. (Author/MLF)

Recounts the history of the first subsistence community founded under the National Industrial Recovery Act during the Great Depression. Arthurdale, West Virginia, provided unemployed workers with rural homes on small plots where they could grow food and supply other needs through part-time industrial employment. A progressive community school…

New research on Chicano education from the perspective of Chicanos illuminates the struggle for equality and access. The establishment of community schools (escuelitas) by Mexican Americans in Texas was intended to preserve Mexican heritage and language as well as prepare children for bicultural existence. (SK)

The past quarter of a century has seen wide extension of the use of schoolhouses for social, recreational, and community purposes, providing fuller utilization of school buildings erected usually at heavy cost. Thirty-two States have definitely provided by law for such use, and in the other States school authorities permit it under their general…

Community schools arose in Texas in opposition to a post-Civil War centralized school system. Emphasis on parental control, minimal regulation, and funding similar to vouchers echo today's issues about school choice. Their history provides lessons for current school reform efforts. (SK)

Small historic sites are endeavors by small communities to preserve elements of their past. The sites they choose reveal the cultural values they esteem today. The structures most frequently represented at seven museum-developed sites are schools and churches because they were agents of social order, centers of community life and ritual, and…

This book explores the country schoolhouses of Texas' rural past. Sources include interviews with dozens of former country schoolteachers and students and first-person narratives collected from written works. Chapters cover the following topics: (1) history of public education and country schools in Texas; (2) distance travelled by teachers and…

China's "minban" (people-managed) schooling was an important instrument for delivering educational and political values to poor areas during Mao's era. Despite national policy aimed at eliminating poorly-qualified minban teachers by 2000, rural communities have been reluctant to dismiss such teachers, given the rural teacher shortage and…

To most settlers in rural North Dakota, the community was the universe, and the rural school served as a community center. The Christmas program was a universal favorite in rural schools, but it was only one of several programs for the public. Local customs, ethnic backgrounds, and a particular teacher's fondness for a holiday or season gave…

As revealed in personal interviews, periodicals, published and unpublished manuscripts, and school records, the teachers were the key factor in bringing education and culture to the frontier that was western South Dakota. Many teachers were girls of 16 or 17, inexperienced, hired from states to the east (Minnesota and Iowa), sight unseen.…

This book highlights episodes in the history of Hispano education in New Mexico, from early territorial days through the New Deal. The 90 years from 1850 to 1940 demonstrate the persistence of the notion that culture can be determined from above, and that schools are a viable tool for determining culture. The myth that Hispanos did not value…

Reviews the history of the Yaqui, first in Mexico, and then in Guadalupe (Arizona). Discusses the use of Yaqui, Spanish, and English within the community; community legal action against the school district over disproportionate special-education placements; resistance to school desegregation; a trilingual community school; and internal and…

Boulder County's long and well-documented history provides a unique opportunity to study the life of a school system, from its inception to the consolidation of its many districts almost 100 years later. The first three chapters of this book describe the establishment of school districts within Boulder County, the characteristics and working…

Chinese "people-managed schools" began in the 1940s as popular voluntary village schools providing flexible relevant education to rural peasants, but are regarded today as low status and low quality. This change reflects the Chinese Communist Party's incremental move away from both decentralized decision making and populist education to…

Farragut School is an example of a successful attempt to adapt the organization, work, and ideas of a country school to the needs of country life. It is located in the open country near the village of Concord, Know County, Tennessee. Through 10 years of varied success this school has demonstrated the fact that the work of the rural school may be…