The School

This is a series of posts about Owatonna State School Museum (starting here), within a series of posts about our three week holiday in the US in June, which starts here.

"Only one year before the Owatonna school opened [that would be 1884], the legislature passed Minnesota's first compulsory education law. 



This new law required children between eight and sixteen to attend school twelve weeks a year. 





The Owatonna State School went much further in its efforts to educate the children sent there - it required an aggressive educational program for the children which had all residents over the age of five in class for ten months per year.





The school also maintained a kindergarten - a concept that would not come into practice in the area for many years to come. 





Early on, only the first three grades were taught at the school, but as time went on and the populations increased, so did the scope of classes.  Later, high school students would enter the Owatonna School system.

In the years to follow, a vocational component was added to keep pace with the educational state-of-the-art movement in the rest of the nation."