From One Room to One World

From its roots in the one-room schoolhouse, American education has always been both shaped by and responsive to the communities it served. The one-room schoolhouse was a response to America’s desire for an increasingly educated youth, in a world of sparsely populated communities and limited forms of transportation and communication. With a concentration on literacy and an eye toward the agrarian calendar, education in these schoolhouses was necessarily a cooperative affair, using older children to engage the younger
while the teacher delivered direct instruction to small groups.

The 21st-century school will be shaped by a world of increased globalization that must be responsive to a world of greater specialization.

Today’s education system must respond to a world of unprecedented technological growth that has broken down geographic boundaries. The community today is a world community, in which
economic realities are changing, opportunities are shifting, and cooperation can take more forms than the mind can imagine. The 21st-century school will be shaped by a world of increased globalization that must be responsive to a world of greater specialization. And it must continue to educate all children without regard to race, ability, or location.

The challenges are enormous as we attempt to identify and preserve those values nurtured by and in the one-room schoolhouse that any community, agrarian or global, must cultivate to thrive.
The task for members of a board of trustees—as community leaders—is to lay the groundwork for change that preserves values and is responsive to the global world of today’s student.

Over the coming year, TASB Leadership Team Services (LTS) will continue to explore the challenges and our collective response. Look for speakers and sessions at our conferences that address the challenge of bringing our successful one-room past into a world we have yet to imagine.

Questions? Contact us at 800.580.8272, extension 6161, or e-mail us.