The one-room schoolhouse -- Not so rare 100 years ago

By Tim Hill
Posted Thursday, June 19, 2008

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By Tim Hill
VIEW Contributor
IMLAY TWP. — Have you ever driven by an old abandoned schoolhouse and wondered about it?

There’s a brick school building on Capac Road (old M-21), a few miles east of Imlay City that’s a testament to bygone days. The building that now stands in disrepair was the Clarks Corners School and once served children in the neighborhoods.

It was like thousands of schoolhouses that dotted the state 100 years ago.

Irene Lahr now makes her home in Harbor Beach, but she grew up on Wheeling Road and went to kindergarten through eighth grade at Clarks Corners back in the 1950s.

Her memories of attending this one-room school have faded a little over the years, but she still offers a vivid picture of what life was like in a simpler time.

“There were three large windows on the east side that let in the light, and on sunny days it was pretty bright. The entrance was on the north side of the building, and on the south wall there were large blackboards where the teacher would write the lessons the students were to copy on paper. There was a separate room behind the classroom that housed a wood or coal-fired stove.”

Lahr didn’t remember how many students attended the school at the time but she was the only student in her class as she moved from first through eighth grade. The only time she had a classmate in the same grade was in kindergarten. When they had their work finished, older students were to help the younger ones with their work.

Handwriting was very important and was practiced over and over. Daily recess was a way to work off restless energy, and as a treat the students would occasionally play baseball with the Bowers School students from down the road. Some of her teachers were Mrs. Donavan, Mrs. Bengry, and Mrs. Bryant.

“We had a Christmas program every year, and we memorized lines for plays and sang songs. Santa usually came and there were gift exchanges,” Lahr remembers with fondness. “Valentine’s Day was always a party with cookies and an exchange of cards,” she said.

A special time was the box social in which the girls decorated a box with a lunch in it. “They put their names inside and the boxes were auctioned to the boys. The boy then shared his lunch with the girl whose name he picked. The money earned from the auction was used to buy books and supplies.”

Many factors contributed to the closing of Clarks Corners School in 1964; one reason was that the local school board found it too hard for a small school district to find a teacher who wanted to stay for any length of time.

The building was sold to a local farmer and it sits today as it has for more than 100 years with its future uncertain. It is no different from most one-room schoolhouses that closed over the middle part of the twentieth century.

One-room schools were a scaled-down version of today’s public schools, each with its own district and school board. They were usually run by local farmers, who made all the major decisions that kept the school operating.

In 1900 there were more than 7,000 school districts with 5,000 one-room schoolhouses in Michigan. By the 1920s the state had begun to merge districts for better efficiency of services, teaching, tax money and also because of improved transportation. The mergers continued throughout the century until today.

In Michigan there are now 510 school districts, and only 20 one-room schoolhouses left in existence.