The Vermont Schoolmarm and the Contemporary One-Room Schoolhouse : An Ethnographic Study of a Contemporary One-Room Schoolteacher. Occasional Paper #12 / Jody Kenny.

This 1987-88 study was conducted to identify, describe, and analyze the significant issues facing one of Vermont's five remaining schoolmarms. The primary subject of the study is a first-year one-room schoolteacher in a rural Vermont town. Chapter 1 offers a brief history of Vermont's one-room schools, a description of the town, the school, and the teacher's "typical" day. Chapter 2 addresses the question of scale. Advantages of smallness are great community involvement, high institutional flexibility, and close interaction among the students, teachers, and parents. Limitations are restricted school space, curriculum, pupil peer groups, efficiency, privacy, and resources. Chapter 3 discusses the schoolmarm's isolation and independence. Chapter 4 examines the issue of educational tradition (embodied by the retiring teacher) and change (represented by her first-year replacement), community expectations, curriculum, work values, patriotism, religion, morality, discipline, resources, and educational philosophy. The paper concludes that one-room pupils receive effective instruction, made possible by well-trained teachers, flexible standards, and better-than-adequate resources. Negative aspects include isolation, urban bias, limited educational options, and unrealistic community expectations. The document includes five tables of Vermont school statistics. (TES)

Microfiche. [Washington D.C.]: ERIC Clearinghouse microfiches : positive.