Country School Journal
The Country School Journal
The Country School Journal, sponsored by the Country School Association of America (CSAA), is a peer-reviewed, online, annual publication that includes interdisciplinary, open-access articles, curriculum, reviews, and icons. Its audience consists of people who wish to preserve country schools, disseminate scholarship about these schools, create and/or maintain the schools as museums, promote living history programs, and enable people of all ages to explore country schooling as practiced in the past and present.
Editors:
- Lucy Townsend, Northern Illinois University
- Nicholas J. Shudak, Mount Marty College
Editorial board:
- Mark DeWalt, Winthrop University
- Veronica I. Ent, St. Vincent College
- Susan Fineman, District #1 School (Nashua, NH)
- David L. Burton, University of Missouri
- Susan Webb, The Traveling Schoolmarm (Birmingham, AL)
Articles are invited that deal with a range of issues and questions, for example:
- teaching or attending one or more country schools during a specific era
- educational technologies used in country schools
- fund raising for the preservation of a country school
- the history of a country school
- the biography of a country schoolteacher
- a book or film review about country schooling
Curriculum includes but is not limited to:
- research methods for discovering the history of a school and its teachers to be used in lesson development
- plans for a public school or family visit to a country school
- script for a re-enactor in a country school
- cooperative efforts to tie a country school visit to the curriculum of a local public or private school
Book or video reviews, poetry, icons, and family histories as related to one or more country schools are also encouraged. Links to videos are provided.
Online Submissions
Publication will be determined by juried review. Submissions should be relevant to CSAA members and others interested in country schooling. Each manuscript should be accompanied by a statement that it is unpublished and has not been submitted to another publisher for possible publication. Articles should be submitted by email to Lucy Townsend (ltownsend@niu.edu) and Nicholas J. Shudak (nicholas.shudak@mtmc.edu). Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce copyrighted material and are required to sign an agreement for the transfer of copyright to the CSAA. All accepted manuscripts, artwork, and photographs become property of the CSAA. For more information, contact Lucy Townsend or Nicholas J. Shudak.
Proofs
Page proofs are sent via email to the designated author. They should be carefully checked and returned within two weeks of receipt. If authors have any problems, they should contact Lucy Townsend or Nicholas J. Shudak.
Online Submission Guidelines
Article Submissions
The suggested length for submissions is 15 to 30 double-spaced pages. Chicago Manual of Style and the sample article below can serve as a guide for formatting a submission. The author should not write his or her name or any identifying information on the manuscript. That information belongs in the author’s email message to the editor.
The Great American Experiment:
The One-room Schools of DeKalb County, Illinois, 1830s—1957
Education has been called a “great American experiment, . . . a test of various philosophies ideas, and institutions.” This study is about one of these experiments—the one-room country school—where most American education occurred from the colonial era to the middle of the twentieth century. In the 1918-19 school year, the number of one-room schools reached the high-water mark of 196,037, including more than ninety thousand in the Midwest. (1)
The focus of this study is on the one-room schools of DeKalb County, Illinois, a 633-square-mile tract of land with its eastern border fifty miles west of Chicago’s Lake Michigan shore and its northern border around twenty-five miles south of the Wisconsin state line. The county was established by the Illinois General Assembly in 1837, from land previously included in neighboring Kane County. DeKalb County is named in honor of Baron DeKalb, a German soldier who was killed while fighting with the American patriots in the Revolutionary War. Most of the county’s earliest settlers were farmers moving west who made their land claims in close proximity to the groves of trees and the streams that were most abundant in the northern and southern areas of the county. Settlement later expanded into the sparsely timbered prairie of the center of the county, particularly after the railroad lines came through. (2)
Between the late 1830s and 1957, when the last one-room school closed in DeKalb County, the county’s children were educated primarily in approximately 160 one-room schools scattered throughout nineteen townships. (3) Why did the residents build and support one-room schools? What role did the schools play in the neighborhoods? What activities typically occurred in these schools? How were teachers selected, educated, paid, and supervised? And what became of these schools? These are the questions that will be explored in this study.
1. Quotation from L. Dean Webb, The History of American Education(Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson-Merrill-Prentice Hall, 2006), v; Wayne Fuller, One-Room Schools of the Middle West: An Illustrated History(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 194), I; Historical Dictionary of American Education, 1st ed., s.v., “One-room Schoolhouses.”Book and Video Review Submissions
Book and video reviews are important contributions to artistic and scholarly work on country schooling. Reviews keep other country school enthusiasts and scholars informed and examine important issues. Reviewers should reveal the strengths, weaknesses, and uniqueness of the work in question. Also, they should include the quality of the author's scholarship and its contribution to the body of visual and scholarly work on country schooling. Reviewers are encouraged to use their knowledge, experience, and taste to write a review. Length of a review may vary from 1,000 to 2,000 words. The submission should include a word count at the bottom of the text. If the video is online, they should provide viewers with a link.
Icon Submissions
Icons (line drawings, halftones, photos, photomicrographs, etc.) may be in color or black and white. The author should submit them as separate digital files (300dpi or higher), they should be sized to fit a journal page, and should be formatted in TIFF, EPS, or PSD. The submissions should include a word count at the bottom of the text. If the video is online, the author should provide viewers with a link.
Criteria for Judging Journal Articles for The Country School Journal
The journal editors plan to include interdisciplinary, open-access articles, curriculum, reviews, and icons in the CSJ. The journal’s audience consists of people who wish to preserve country schools, disseminate scholarship about these schools, create and/or maintain the schools as museums, promote living history programs, and enable people of all ages to explore country schooling as practiced in the past and present. Historical scholarship is very different from poetry, a review, an oral history, guidelines for preserving a school, a dramatic script, and curriculum. Thus, select from these evaluation criteria or ignore them entirely and write a paragraph about your reaction to the submission.
The editors plan to help authors whose submission have potential but have weaknesses, such as a lack of familiarity with Chicago Manual of Style.
1. Topic’s Appropriateness for the CSJ
___ (3) Very appropriate for the audience as described above and as per the Country School Association of America website (www.countryschoolassociation.org).
___ (2) Appropriate but there are elements to the submission that might fall outside of the intended audience’s scope.
___ (1) Marginally relevant to the audience of the CSAA.
2. Creativity
___ (3) The submission provides unique knowledge relevant to the study of and interest in country schools.
___ (2) The submission borrows heavily from previous scholarship, but also provides new insights.
___ (1) The submission largely resembles a list of dates, names, and locations without a unique perspective or viewpoint.
3. Ability to Engage Readers
___ (3) The submission’s quality (for example, research, writing style, voice, viewpoint, perspective, insights) captivate the reader(s).
___ (2) In many respects the submission captivates the reader(s).
___ (1) The author seems unaware of the interests of the audience.
4. Clarity of Communication
___ (3) The author clearly communicates to the reader his/her ideas about the topic and their importance. Level of communication makes for a comfortable read.
___ (2) Efforts toward clear communication are noticeable; however, the reader is left with several unanswered questions during and after reading.
___ (1) Communication is often unclear.
5. Organization
___ (3) The submission is very well organized and flows nicely from beginning to end.
___ (2) There are a few critical instances of disorganization that make the submission a bit difficult to follow.
___ (1) The submission is hard to follow.
6. Depth/Thoroughness
___ (3) The submission provides a context for the topic, includes other scholarship on the topic, and addresses key issues pertaining to the topic.
___ (2) The author addresses superficially the following: context, scholarship, and reflections on key issues related to the topic.
___ (1) The reader has a serious concern about one of the following: context, current research, or the author’s ability to address key issues.
7. Evidence of New Ideas, Feelings and/or Knowledge
Using the following scale, to what degree do you think that this submission provides the discourse with something new in terms of an idea presented, a feeling or viewpoint expressed, or new knowledge pertaining to country schools.
___ (3) High Degree ___ (2) Adequate Degree ___ (1) Low Degree
8. If the submission is historical scholarship, does the submission provide appropriate documentation?
___ (3) Yes ___ (2) Somewhat ___ (1) No
Score Total: _______
This submission should be: ___accepted ___ accepted if revised ___ rejected
Suggestions for the author:
Bibliographic Information and Referencing Guidelines
Each scholarly submission should provide complete references, text citations, and notes according to The Chicago Manual of Style, Sixteenth Edition.
Table and Figure Submissions
Tables and figures should not be included as separate files. Each table should also include a brief descriptive title with a clear legend and any footnotes identified below the table. All units should be included. Figures should be completely labeled, taking into account necessary size reduction. Captions should be typed, double-spaced, on a separate sheet. All other figures should be clearly marked in pencil on the reverse side with the number, author's name, and top edge indicated.
