Bath Center, Ohio, USA

Defining Main Street: The Public School. What set the stage for public schools in the United States? The Old Deluder Satan Act of 1647. It mandated community schooling in Massachusetts so that everyone would grow up being able to read the Bible for themselves. A few Main Street schools like this survive, but most have suburbanized. [1995]

Frisco, Colorado, USA

What becomes of one-room school houses? Some become museums or historical society headquarters. In fact, a community is lucky if their school has survived the ages to remind up-coming generations of scholars what is used to be like to get an education. [2013] 

Middletown, Rhode Island, USA

♫ School days, school days, dear old Golden Rule days. Reading and 'riting and 'rithmetic, taught to the tune of the hick'ry stick. You were my queen in calico, I was your bashful, barefoot beau. And you wrote on my slate, ‘I Love You, Joe,’ when we were a couple o' kids. ♫ [2008]

Pierre, South Dakota, USA

"Pierre's first school house" goes back to 1881, pre-dating the establishment of the city's public schools. Its tenure as a school was short, but the building survived into the 1960s when it was moved by a group of preservation-minded citizens from a street in town to become a focal point of the capital city's riverfront park. [2021]

Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, USA

Study hard. If the kids in the local universe haven't started school yet, today is the day. Their schools, however, do not look like this. The one-room school house (this one moved to the campus of Shippensburg State College in 1969) was a foundation stone of American education. One hundred years ago, there were 190,000; today, there are under 400. [1993]

Gardner, Massachusetts, USA

The backdrop suggests work. The action suggests play. Let's not confuse the two. Work is work, and play is play, and never the twain shall meet. Then, again, this young scholar looks like he is working hard at play. [2013]

San Juan, Puerto Rico

It used to be a tradition (rarer these days) to honor the illuminati of history by naming schools after them. In Puerto Rico, they have gone beyond naming. On the campus of the Escuela Graduada Abraham Lincoln in Old San Juan, they have replicated the Lincoln Memorial (sin apología to Daniel Chester French). American citizens all, we are. [2009]