Blackboard jumble yields schools' past (Maryland)
But in southern Anne Arundel County, a humble, even homely one-room structure built several decades later was all the Nutwell School could offer its students.
The myth of the little red schoolhouse has only a kernel of truth, says James G. Gibb, an Annapolis-based archaeologist. From town to town, they varied in size, shape and stature. In a sense, each early school building was a measure, along with teacher pay, attendance rates and textbooks, of how high a community aimed in educating the next generation.
"Schoolhouses were the most common public buildings on the landscape," Gibb says. "They are a great place to look at a community, since so much of our lives are spent in school. The differences tell a lot. You get a view of a community's ambition, or lack thereof."