Members and educators only – no fee
To celebrate the reopening of the Preservation Foundation’s Little Red Schoolhouse after its being closed for over a year due to a soil remediation project at Phipps Ocean Park, Jonathan Zimmerman will come speak about his book Small Wonder - The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory.
The importance of the little red schoolhouse in national memory remains unshakable. This engaging book examines the history of the one-room school and how successive generations of Americans have remembered—and just as often misremembered—this powerful national icon.
Drawing on a rich range of sources, from firsthand accounts to poems, songs, and films, Jonathan Zimmerman traces the evolution of attitudes toward the little red schoolhouse from the late nineteenth century to the present day. At times it was celebrated as a symbol of lost rural virtues or America’s democratic heritage; at others it was denounced as the epitome of inefficiency and substandard academics. Yet the idyllic image of the schoolhouse still unites Americans. For more than a century, it has embodied the nation’s best aspirations and—especially—its continuing faith in education itself.
Jonathan Zimmerman is professor of education and history, New York University. His previous books include Innocents Abroad: American Teachers in the American Century and Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools.
SPACE IS LIMITED, SO PLEASE CALL 561.832.0731 TO RSVP.