A schoolhouse is a small building used as a school, especially in rural areas or small towns. Before large school buildings became common, children in farming communities would gather in a simple one-room schoolhouse, where a single teacher taught students of all ages together. The youngest children might be learning their alphabet while older students worked on algebra at the same time.

These buildings were often plain and practical: wooden walls, a potbelly stove for heat, rows of desks, and a chalkboard. Students walked to school from nearby farms, sometimes trudging through snow or mud. The teacher lived nearby and handled everything from teaching reading to starting the morning fire.

The classic image of the one-room schoolhouse represents an important part of American history, when scattered families came together to make sure their children got an education. Laura Ingalls Wilder attended schools like this on the frontier. Many of these old schoolhouses still stand today as museums or historic sites.

People sometimes use schoolhouse to mean any school building, but it especially calls to mind these small, simple schools from earlier times.