The usual country school was only a rude frame or log building, sometimes without glass windows, in which one untrained teacher, without apparatus or the simplest conveniences, attempted to give instruction in at least half a dozen subjects to a group of children of all ages during a period of ten to fifteen weeks a year.
Often even this meager period was divided into a summer and winter term, on the plea that the older children could not be spared from the farms for the whole time or that bad roads and stormy weather prevented the youngest from attending during the winter.
Though it seems almost incredible under such conditions, something was nevertheless accomplished.

Many children, it is true, learned little or nothing and gave up the pretense of attending school.

Others, however, found something to feed their hungry minds and, when they had exhausted what their neighborhood school had to offer, they attended the academies which had been reestablished or had sprung up in the villages nearby or at the countyseat.

Between 1875 and 1890, it was not at all uncommon to find in such academies grown men and women studying the regular high school subjects.

Some had previously taught rural schools and now sought further instruction; and others had worked on the farms or had been in business.
Men of twenty-five or thirty sat in classes with town children of fifteen or sixteen, but made such a large proportion of the total attendance that they did not feel embarrassed by the contrast in ages.
In the eighties there were scores of these academies, institutes, and seminaries in the towns of the South.