top of page

Springfield schools

Springfield has never been a center of learning, unless you counted a small private junior college and the steno school known as Brown's Business College, which many Springfieldians did. Until 2006 Springfield was one of the rare cities its size without a conventional four-year college or university. When the city finally got a university (courtesy of the General Assembly) it turned out to be not at all what local burghers expected.

As for its public schools, I attended them from kindergarten through high school, and my diploma from Springfield High is my last completed degree. Those schools were no better than they had to be, but until late in my adolescence I loved going to school. If  I never learned to enjoy being taught—more of my education happened in libraries and bookshops than in classrooms—District 186's teachers did not leave me hating to learn.

 

As for high school, I suppose it is churlish to complain. It is to the local schools that I owe my career as a writer, as District 186 gave me a subject and a motivation. The plight (as I saw it) of students confined as second-class citizens in second-class schools systems, attendance at which was compelled by law—students very like the recent me, as it happened—moved me deeply enough to take up a pen.

It was not only personal pique that prompted me to write. Better schools not only would have meant a better James Krohe Jr.—which is not a matter of public moment—they would have meant a better Springfield, which is.  

Click on the title for the full article.

To leave an article and return to this page, click on your browser's back button

Planting Seeds

The meager harvest from school gardens

“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times March 16, 2017​

Stuck in the '70s

The UIS 2008 master campus plan

“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times September 3, 2009

UIS, the Educational City

The original vision for the campus

“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times October 22, 2009

Three into One Won’t Go

The new high school debate

“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times  October 1, 2009

Better Boxes

Replacing Springfield High School

“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times December 17, 2009

How Do You Say “What Do We Owe?” in Mandarin?

Local schools think about teaching China’s official language

“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times March 18, 2010

Two Schools for the Price of One

Is there an alternative to tearing down Enos Elementary?

“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times September 22, 2011

Nickeled and Dimed

Confusing management for governance in District 186

“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times May 24, 2012

Looking for Mr. Right

District 186 needs more than a new superintendent

“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times May 9, 2013

Do By Learning

The need for expanded work-based schooling in Springfield

“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times August 15, 2013

The Encouragement of Competent Teachers

Would Elizabeth Graham be allowed to teach today?

“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times April 30, 2015

Stellar! Stellar!

Springfield’s U of I passes the hat

“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times November 2, 2017

Board Games

Everybody loses in the Walter Milton affair

"Dyspepsiana"  Illinois Times  February 28, 2013

Finding a Niche

Sangamon State U. after twenty years

“Prejudices”  Illinois Times  February 20, 1992

A Nest of Singing Birds

Two Springfield English teachers raise a flock

“Prejudices”  Illinois Times  September 8, 1978

“A Fraud and a Hoax”

Defining incompetence in incompetent schools

“Prejudices”  Illinois Times  March 2, 1979

Ten Years After, or Whither SSU?

Grading Illinois’s new university on the curve

“Prejudices”  Illinois Times  May 20, 1982

Valuable Things

I look back at public school and see myself

“Prejudices”  Illinois Times  March 5, 1987

Trusting to Miracles
District 186 tries to excite the reluctant learner
"Dyspepsiana"  Illinois Times  September 9, 2010

Beware of Your Schools
The best education equips a child to resist schooling.

Reader April 24, 1987

DeviceTransparent

Click on the title for the full article.

To leave an article and return to this page, click on your browser's back button

SITES

OF

INTEREST

John Hallwas

Essential for anyone interested in Illinois history and literature. Hallwas deservedly won the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Illinois State Historical Society.

Lee Sandlin Author

One of Illinois’s best, and least-known, writers of his generation. Take note in particular of The Distancers and Road to Nowhere.

Chicago Architecture Center

See Home Page/Learn/

Resources for a marvelous building database, architecture dictionary, even a city planning graphic novel. Handsome, useful—every Illinois culture website should be so good.

The Encyclopedia of Chicago

 

The online version of The Encyclopedia of Chicago. Crammed with thousands of topic entries, biographical sketches, maps and images, it is a reference work unmatched in Illinois.

Illinois Great Places

The Illinois chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 2018 selected 200 Great Places in Illinois that illustrate our  shared architectural culture across the entire period of human settlement in Illinois.

McLean County Museum

of History

A nationally accredited, award-winning project of the McLean County Historical Society whose holdings include more than 20,000 objects, more than 15,000 books on local history and genealogy, and boxes and boxes of historical papers and images.

Mr. Lincoln, Route 66, and Other Highlights of Lincoln, Illinois

 

Every Illinois town ought to have a chronicler like D. Leigh Henson, Ph.D. Not only Lincoln and the Mother road—the author’s curiosity ranges from cattle baron John Dean Gillett to novelist William Maxwell. An Illinois State Historical Society "Best Web Site of the Year."

Illinois Digital Archives

 

Created in 2000, the IDA is a repository for the digital collections of the Illinois State Library and other Illinois libraries and cultural institutions. The holdings include photographs, slides, and glass negatives, oral histories, newspapers, maps, and documents from manuscripts and letters to postcards,  posters, and videos.

The Illinois State Museum

 

The people's museum is a treasure house of science and the arts. A research institution of national reputation, the museum maintains four facilities across the state. Their collections in anthropology, fine and decorative arts, botany, zoology, geology, and  history are described here. A few museum publications can be obtained here.

Chronicling Illinois

“Chronicling Illinois” showcases some of the collections—mostly some 6,000 photographs—from the Illinois history holdings of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.

Chicagology

I will leave it to the authors of this interesting site to describe it. "Chicagology is a study of Chicago history with a focus on the period prior to the Second World War. The purpose of the site is to document common and not so common stories about the City of Chicago as they are discovered." 

Illinois Labor History Society

The Illinois Labor History Society seeks to encourage the preservation and study of labor history materials of the Illinois region, and to arouse public interest in the profound significance of the past to the present. Offers books reviews, podcasts, research guides, and the like. 

Illinois Migration History 1850-2017

The University of Washington’s America’s Great Migrations Project has compiled migration histories  (mostly from the published and unpublished work by UW Professor of History James Gregory) for several states, including Illinois. The site also includes maps and charts and essays about the Great Migration of African Americans to the north, in which Illinois figured importantly. 

History on the Fox

An interesting resource about the history of one of Illinois’s more interesting places, the Fox Valley of Kendall County. History on the Fox is the work of Roger Matile, an amateur historian of the best sort. Matile’s site is a couple of cuts above the typical buff’s blog. (An entry on the French attempt to cash in on the trade in bison pelts runs more than

2,000 words.)

BOOKS

 OF INTEREST

SIUPromoCoverPic.jpg

Southern Illinois University Press 2017

A work of solid history, entertainingly told.

Michael Burlingame,

author of Abraham 

Lincoln: A Life 

One of the ten best books on Illinois history I have read in a decade.

Superior Achievement Award citation, ISHS Awards, 2018

A lively and engaging study . . .  an enthralling narrative.

James Edstrom

The Annals of Iowa

A book that merits the attention of all Illinois historians

as well as local historians generally.

John Hoffman

Journal of Illinois HIstory

A model for the kind of detailed and honest history other states and regions could use.

Harold Henderson 

Midwestern Microhistory

A fine example of a resurgence of Midwest historical scholarship.

Greg Hall

Journal of the Illinois

State Historical Society

Click  here 

to read about

the book 

Click  here 

to buy the book 

DeviceTransparent

Southern Illinois University Press

SIU Press is one of the four major university publishing houses in Illinois. Its catalog offers much of local interest, including biographies of Illinois political figures, the history (human and natural) and folklore of southern Illinois, the Civil War and Lincoln, and quality reprints in the Shawnee Classics series.

University of

Illinois Press

The U of I Press was founded in 1918. A search of the online catalog  (Books/Browse by subject/Illinois) will reveal more than 150 Illinois titles, books on history mostly but also butteflies, nature , painting, poetry and fiction, and more.  Of particular note are its Prairie State Books,  quality new paperback editions of worthy titles about all parts of Illinois, augmented with scholarly introductions.

University of

Chicago Press

The U of C publishing operation is the oldest (1891) and largest university press in Illinois. Its reach is international, but it has not neglected its own neighborhood. Any good Illinois library will include dozens of titles about Chicago and Illinois from Fort Dearborn to

Vivian Maier.

Northern Illinois University Press

The newest (1965) and the smallest of the university presses with an interest in Illinois, Northern Illinois University Press gave us important titles such as the standard one-volume history of the state (Biles' Illinois:
A History of the Land and Its People) and contributions to the history of Chicago, Illinois transportation, and the Civil War. Now an imprint of Cornell University Press.

DeviceTransparent

Reviews and significant mentions by James Krohe Jr. of more than 50 Illinois books, arranged in alphabetical order

by book title. 

DeviceTransparent

Illinois Center for the Book

Run by the Illinois State Library, The Center promotes reading, writing and author programs meant to honor the state's rich literary heritage. An affiliate of the Library of Congress’s Center for the Book, the site offers award competitions, a directory of Illinois authors, literary landmarks, and reading programs.

imageedit_3_Flipped_edited_edited.png
bottom of page