In Goddard School Memories, author and historian Ginny Reeves tells the story of the Goddard, Kentucky, common school through its people, giving slices of life from the log field schools to the three-room school. The common school movement, widely regarded as the most significant reform in nineteenth century American education, was developed by Horace Mann of Massachusetts. Mann's goal was to provide free education to all, regardless of wealth, heritage, or class. His theme is from Proverbs 22:6: Train up a child the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. It was used at Goddard School every day. This comprehensive history of rural education in Kentucky details social, cultural, and educational events, giving state and local curriculum, contracts, teaching methods, textbooks, moonlight schools, and common school requirements.

Goddard School Memories has many engaging anecdotes full of adventure, humor, and tragedy. The collection covers tales that range from daring discipline issues with naughty boys putting skunk oil in teachers coat pockets, turning over outhouses, misplacing tombstones in the cemetery, taking boards from the schoolhouse, and making wooden pistols, to memories of box suppers, plays, and a musical performance by Tom T. Hall before he became a noted county music star, to the celebrated eighth grade graduation events at the neighboring Goddard Methodist Church, to the federal school lunch program that spurred the development of a lunchroom, the electrical wiring of the school, and the building of a cistern

Genealogists will be delighted with a list of students who attended Goddard School, listing birth dates and parent names. Short biographies of many teachers are given. Goddard School Memories is a moving portrait of schoolroom stories that preserves the rich educational heritage of Fleming County, Kentucky.

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