Education: The Vanishing Red Schoolhouse

Three generations of western Iowa farmers learned reading, writing and arithmetic at Otter Township’s one-room Concord School. Next month, when schools all over Iowa reopen, Concord (which had only four pupils last term) will be closed. So will 1,700 other small Iowa schools, wiped out since 1941—and few Iowans will be sorry.

An acute shortage of teachers, and a $2 million-a-year state appropriation for school buses had done most to speed the merger of Iowa schools. But there are still 6,500 one-room schools in Iowa, 96,000 in the nation, mostly in the Midwest.