TY - BOOK ID - 78070212 TI - Small wonder PY - 2009 SN - 1282351818 9786612351815 0300156278 9780300156270 9781282351813 9780300123265 0300123264 6612351810 PB - New Haven Yale University Press DB - UniCat KW - School buildings KW - Buildings, School KW - School architecture KW - School-houses KW - Schoolhouses KW - Public buildings KW - School facilities KW - Social aspects KW - History. KW - School buildings -- Social aspects -- United States -- History. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:78070212 AB - The little red schoolhouse has all but disappeared in the United States, but its importance in national memory remains unshakable. This engaging book examines the history of the one-room school and how successive generations of Americans have remembered-and just as often misremembered-this powerful national icon. Drawing on a rich range of sources, from firsthand accounts to poems, songs, and films, Jonathan Zimmerman traces the evolution of attitudes toward the little red schoolhouse from the late nineteenth century to the present day. At times it was celebrated as a symbol of lost rural virtues or America's democratic heritage; at others it was denounced as the epitome of inefficiency and substandard academics. And because the one-room school has been a useful emblem for liberal, conservative, and other agendas, the truth of its history has sometimes been stretched. Yet the idyllic image of the schoolhouse still unites Americans. For more than a century, it has embodied the nation's best aspirations and-especially-its continuing faith in education itself. ER -