The role of the rural school on the plains of eastern Nebraska from the early days of the frontier to 1980 is examined in this portion of an eight-state research effort, the Country School Legacy Project, sponsored by the Mountain Plains Library Association to locate and preserve information related to country schools. Data and anecdotes obtained through interviews, school records, published accounts, and visits to abandoned and existing school sites are presented under six chapter headings: Nebraska country schools as historic sites; Nebraska country schools as community centers; teachers; the 3 Rs (curriculum); early ethnic education (the role of the school in the Americanization process); and Nebraska country schools today. The first school in Nebraska is identified as a log structure built outside the walls of Fort Atkinson in 1822. For over a century Nebraska's schools have provided rural neighborhoods with a sense of community because they were the one place where all could gather for meetings, school programs, and social occasions. According to the feelings of one person interviewed, the present administrative policy of reorganizing country schools with city schools, rather than consolidating them into larger, but still rural, schools is responsible for the diminished role of the country school today. (NEC)