Kids Actually Learned to Read Before $260k Jumbotrons

Brutus — I’m driving over potholed roads at the northernmost point of the Lower Peninsula. Farmland whips by in patchwork scraps. Sunflowers bow to the breeze. I go for miles without seeing another car. 

You can find old one-room schoolhouses around here. And that’s what I’m searching for. If you know what to look for, they’re easy to spot. Small, square, symmetrical. Sometimes with a big slab of concrete out front where the bell was. Sometimes a little belfry on top. 

Most have either been torn down or converted into houses or township halls. Only a few have been preserved. The last barely hang on, having been mostly consumed by nature.  

As I drive, I imagine old timey kids walking along the side of the road. Books tied up in leather belts, kicking up dust, and laughing in the early morning hours of a new school day on the edge of fall. 

Then I think about the brand-new gymnasium scoreboard they recently installed at Petoskey High School, not far from where I live. It’s one of those NBA-style ones that fits into the middle of the ceiling. The score can be seen from any angle. Cost? $260,790. 

Imagine if the children of early 20th-century Michigan walked into that empty gymnasium. The scoreboard towers overhead. Suddenly, it blasts on and pixelated graphics light up on the screen. The students stand in awe. Finally, they realize what their education has been missing.

I keep driving. The GPS says turn right, but I hesitate at the dirt road. Any northerner knows a dirt road could be a dirt road, but it could also be an old two-track leading to a sand and gravel nightmare where you will get irreversibly stuck without cell service. 

I start down. Soon it’s a two-track, now mostly sand. Narrower and narrower. Finally it opens up. I drive out onto pavement but quickly slow down again. I’m looking for an old school near Good Hart where M-119, the Tunnel of Trees, starts. It’s supposed to be barely visible from the road. I saw a picture online. I go too far and run into Lake Michigan. Back again. There, passed it. Turn back. 

I get out and step into the weeds. The paint’s all gone. Windows broken. A “For Sale” sign out front. The toilet seat from the outhouse in back was yanked out and is now lying in the ferns next to some bricks and beer bottles. I try to peek in the windows, but they’re too dust covered.

These schoolhouses used to be all over so that no kid ever lived more than a few miles from one. We’d sneak into them in high school and take pictures of the weird things we found. 

It was a simpler time.

Then: A blackboard, slates chalk. 

Now: An 86-inch digital touchscreen at the front of the room and an iPad for every student. 

Then: A grass field and some balls.  

Now: A hardwood gymnasium and athletic fields for every sport. 

Then: An end-of-year picnic.  

Now: A spring break trip to Daytona Beach. 

Today, it’s totally normal to throw millions at schools to turn them into spaceships. Toss a dart at a map of Michigan, and you’ll find a nearby community that “desperately needs” a brand-new school, even though the old one’s most pressing issues are raggedy carpet and buggy wiring. 

So apparently, it makes sense to tear that 1950s filth down. Young Michiganders thrive in fancy schools! Finally, we’re churning out an energetic young population full of ideas and innovation. 

Oh, but were it true. Actually, 60% of Michigan fourth graders can’t read.

Can’t even read. 

People become irate when you criticize sports arenas and the ubiquity of screens and fancy atriums and student lounges in new schools. The kids need them, they say. These (insert activity/technology/expense here) are giving students the chance to build close friendships, work as a team, learn leadership. It gives them a leg up in life. 

It’s wild these concepts are only teachable with state-of-the-art computers, ergonomic chairs, sweat-wicking sports uniforms, and high-priced theatrical equipment. 

Is it possible not only that these things aren’t helping? Michigan public schools have outsourced bussing, cafeteria services, janitorial services, even substitute teaching to corporations located who knows where. Instead of small community schools, many places now bus everyone to the center of town and shove them into an enormous concrete prison with turquoise walls and LED lighting. Some students spend two hours a day commuting. 

It’s not an exaggeration to say that, today, kids are stamped out like assembly line products. I hear from adults my age who attended large suburban schools in the Detroit area that they didn’t know most of their classmates. “Why is that weird?” they ask with genuine curiosity. 

No school system is ideal. Because despite their simple beauty and country quaintness, there were actually a lot of not-so-great things about rural one-room schoolhouses. The teachers, usually young women, needed no qualifications and were often barely better educated than their oldest students. Turnover was high because they kept getting married. They had limited access to books. Most of the focus was on rote memorization. It was hard even to heat the little buildings properly. 

Still. We deserve an answer to a simple question: What do we lose and trade when we consistently vote for bigger schools, more expensive schools, more technology-ridden schools?

Many Michiganders are looking for something better. An increasing number of parents are becoming more active in their kids’ educations, either by homeschooling or hybrid schooling (part-time learning at school, part-time at home). 

You see more people creating homeschool co-ops, many of which attempt to recreate the one-room schoolhouse vibe with the benefits of modern technology. The beauty of the past unified with the power of the future.

It’s tempting to want to just go back. Old schoolhouses have a beautiful quality. Walking up to one near ​Lake Michigan, I saw a water pump outside. A century old and it still works just fine, a reminder that bigger and more complicated is not always better.

We don’t have to go back to go forward, but we can think smaller, think simpler. Think local. We can learn from those old schoolhouses that still stand.

Faye Root is a writer and a homeschooling mother based in Northern Michigan. Follow her on X @littlebayschool.