Pioneer Classroom

Monument depicting a frontier schoolteacher accompanied by her students. It was dedicated "to the pioneers and educators of the State of Oklahoma" in 1999. Public monuments to pioneer women often honor them as teachers or informal educators of their own children.

One of several works of public art located along the Legacy Trail, this statue depicts a seated frontier teacher dressed in a prairie-style gown gazing at a large book on her lap. A young girl reads with her, pointing to the book while gazing up at the teacher's face. A barefooted boy sits cross-legged on her other side, writing on a slate in his lap with a piece of chalk in his proper right hand. A wagon wheel stands behind them. The monument was dedicated July 3, 1999 "to the pioneers and educators of the State of Oklahoma."

Dozens of monuments to pioneer women honor their role as educators preparing the next generation and carrying white American culture to the frontier. A similar scene of a woman reading with a young girl appears in marble bas relief in the Oregon State Library in Salem, Oregon. The better-known Pioneer Woman monument in Ponca City, Oklahoma, features a young mother walking westward, carrying a Bible with which to educate her young son and the peoples of the West.

Prescott, Cynthia Culver. Pioneer Mother Monuments. Norman, Oklahoma. University of Oklahoma Press, 2019.