Rural America's district schools provided public school reformers with one of their most obvious targets. One-room log or clapboard cabins with small windows, uncomfortable benches, and little heat in the winter held pupils aged anywhere from three to twenty. The conditions were so poor at these rural schools that Horace Mann was able to point out that New England farmers housed their hogs in better buildings than those to whichfhey sent their children to be taught. Reformers wanted to improve not only the schoolhouse itself but also what went on inside. The district schools taught farmers' children rudimentary reading and counting skills but little else. District schools stayed open only a few months of the year. Moreover, schoolmasters were too often ill trained, ill tempered, and ill paid. As reformers explained, they put more stress on "lickin" (with a hickory stick) than on "larnin...