This book documents and compares the social organization and academic arrangement of instruction in two remaining modern, public one-teacher schools in rural Nebraska. Neither school is an educational intervention and both stand far removed from reform consciousness, in both the minds of reformers and in those of the people who inhabit them. Each school's teacher does what comes naturally to her or him and the two teacher engage in remarkable distinct practices. One creates an especially efficient form of traditional, conservative teaching that echoes strongly the old country school...

This book documents and compares the social organization and academic arrangement of instruction in two remaining modern, public one-teacher schools in rural Nebraska. Neither school is an educational intervention and both stand far removed from reform consciousness, in both the minds of reformers and in those of the people who inhabit them. Each school's teacher does what comes naturally to her or him and the two teacher engage in remarkable distinct practices. One creates an especially efficient form of traditional, conservative teaching that echoes strongly the old country school...