On a farm in the 1800s, your life would have been centered around that farm.
But over the course of time, that radius of what your life took in got bigger and bigger
and bigger.
By the 1920s everyone had their own automobile, most farm families had their own automobile.
They might only drive them into town on the weekends or drive them to church on sunday,
but it had increased the circle of how far they could go.
By the 1950s that was even a bigger circle of influence.
So lifestyle, the concepts of time and space had changed in american rural life.
So it was easier for them to give up the schools.
And give them up they did, as a requirement of an iowa law created in the 1950s.
Basically, the new legislation said that each school distric had to have kindergarten through
12th grade, which meant it had to offer its own high school.
Consolidation, as it would come to be known, was very slow from 1922 through 1953.
Then with the new legislation it picked up steam.
The law didn't totally drive it though.
Wwii had intensified industrialization.
People were moving away from rural areas and into the cities, shrinking one-room schoolhouse
class sizes.
The quality of rural education was pushed into the limelight and found questionable
by some.
Economics played into it too.
It was more affordable to run one bigger school than several small schools.
Whether a rural school closed and joined with another district in the early 1900s or not
until the 1950s, it was sometimes a distasteful prospect.
“Consolidation was a difficult subject for people because you have to remember that the
local farm families had been controlling these rural schools all of these years.
They would select the teacher.
They would select the books.
It was all under their control.
They felt once their children went into the town schools then they wouldn't have such
control over the education.
They weren't convinced that they were going to get as good of quality.
Plus they probably didn't want the children riding in the school bus.
It was going to make for a much longer school day and more difficult, they felt, for the
children.”
In those years of change, things were sometimes very challenging for the young students making
such a big transition.
“In the fall of my seventh grade year, they decided that they were going to have to close
the country school.
It was like, "oh, my gosh!
Now what!"
we went into this junior high school with all these kids and teachers -- we knew nobody
-- scared to death.”
“We went to mediapolis, which was a big adjustment, a big change from one little room
and going to a big school.
Riding the school bus was a new experience.
It was a very long ride.
And then a lot of different teachers, a lot of different subjects, a lot of moving around.
Making new friends was hard because we were such a small school.
So it was a big adjustment.”
When it was all said and done iowa law required all public rural schools to close by june
of 1966.
Iowa's countryside was filled with the sounds of doors being padlocked and windows being
boarded up.
What was once a hallmark of a simple liberty was now a landmark to a simpler time.