Twice-A-Week News
Mount Ayr, Ringgold County, Iowa
1898

If there is any one thing of which the people of Ringgold county have cause to be proud it is their public schools. With 136 schoolhouses, 158 schools, including six graded schools conducted by able instructors, their pride is not only pardonable but just. And if, with all the golden opportunities afforded by these schools, the young of the county shall remain uneducated, their ignorance will be indeed unpardonable.

Miss MILLER has been so successful in her principalship of the Ellston schools that another department has been added, and Diagonal, under the skillful management of Miss BLAKESLEY also finds another pepartment a necessity. The work of Professor TALBERT has been so perfectly satisfactory to the people of Knowlton that his services as principal of their school for the coming year have been secured.

In the country our schoolhouses are situated two miles apart, on the most beautiful sites that can be procured and in time, when the directors have planted sufficient trees, they will be surrounded by beautiful groves.

Our county normal [school for the teachers and educators] will be held at Mt. Ayr, commencing August 3, and will continue two weeks. We hope to see every teacher present, since we expect all who do not hold state certificates to pass the examination, as two additionals studies, civics and economics, have been added to the list. We expect to have a very interesting normal, not for the purpose of cramming for the examination, but to instruct and advise with teachers how to organize, manage and control schools, and how to properly care for the health, comfort, general culture and moral elevation of their pupils. And then there are the children. What would the schools be without them! In their bright eyes and intelligent faces we can read the destiny of our country.

And the parents of these bright children; we know they are ready to do everything in their power to aid the work; ready to visit, to help, to encourage the teacher, to give of their means to promote this great work of education. We feel assured with the intelligent class of people in our county and their willingness to lend a helping hand, that the schools of Ringgold county will in the near future be second to none in the state.

Transcription by Sharon R. Becker, May of 2010

This schoolhouse was moved from Taylor County to this site located one mile north of Diagonal on the "High and Dry." By the summer of 2005 the schoolhouse was gone.