After doing some research, I discovered that the first building to be built on the new campus was the Wiecking Center.

To many students of Minnesota State University, Mankato, the Wiecking Center is just a long walk from Gage, or another building in which they attend class. To many Alumni and older citizens of Mankato, the Wiecking Center is a great part of their life, which abruptly ended in the spring of 1977, when the Wilson Campus School was officially closed.

Beginning in 1914, what was then Mankato State had a laboratory school as a part of its teacher education program (Faust, 13). The state of Minnesota and the Mankato public school district made an agreement to cover the cost of tuition for students attending the laboratory school. The school was designed to help children learn in a laboratory environment and for students of the University to observe classrooms as they prepared for teaching positions.

In 1958, after World War II, enrollment of Mankato State grew rapidly making the demand for an expansion of the teaching program very necessary. After serious consideration, a new “state of the art” building was built, specifically to be used as the laboratory school, on the Highland Campus. This was the second building to be built on the new campus.

The new laboratory school was home to 500 students in kindergarten through the twelfth grades. The school was named the Wilson Campus School, after Woodrow Wilson, the 27^th U.S. president, because many of the other public elementary schools in Mankato were named after former U.S. presidents. When the school was first opened, the curriculum was very typical of other Minnesota public schools. The school followed the prescribed course study of the Department of Education. A few years after its opening, the school formed athletic teams and extracurricular activities. So what was the difference between a lab school and a regular public school? At the time, not a whole lot.

In the fall of 1968, Don Glines became the director of Wilson and he made a world of difference. Glines had been a classroom teacher in the 1950’s and it did not take him long to realize what was wrong with the public school system. Don had a vision of creating a true laboratory school. He didn’t want to see any of the traditional acts of a public school. He wanted to find a new way of educating students. He envisioned a school full of experiments and dreamed of creating the best lab school in the country.

The first thing Glines did to change the atmosphere of the school was to disconnect the school bell. After he unhooked the bell, “I went crazy…”Glines quotes (Mankato Free Press). There were so many changes made to the school, some may think are untrue because of their irrationality.

Wilson offered unprecedented freedom for students. The teachers in the school were actually referred to as advisors. The students were able to choose their advisors, making the advisor/student relationship the best fit for the student as possible. Wilson administration wanted to make sure that the children felt comfortable with their advisors, and the advisors felt comfortable with the students.

Every student that attended Wilson made his or her own schedule. They got to choose which class to attend, which teacher they wanted, and when to go to each class. Attendance was optional throughout the whole building. A student could spend four hours learning about four different subjects, or they could spend sixteen hours learning about one subject. They made their own timeline. By doing this, each student was happy because they got to choose what they learned.

The classification of age and grade was eliminated at the Wilson Campus School. Each student learned at his or her own pace. There was no need to know what “grade” a student was in. The administration knew that children learned at different paces. There are some children who learn to read by age 4 and others who don’t learn to read until age 9. At Wilson, this was a perfectly normal characteristic of students, but there was no worry about a kindergartner who could read, but a fourth grader who couldn’t read. At a normal public school, the kindergartner would be considered a genius while the fourth grader would be considered a slow learner and most likely placed into special classes. Also, in a normal public school, children are classified by age. All six-year-olds are treated the same, and all twelve-year-olds are treated the same. This didn’t happen at Wilson. There were eight-year-old students taking classes with sixteen-year-old students. This was all a part of Wilson’s innovative nature and plan for a truly better form of education.

Another change Wilson made was the removal of textbooks. There was not one classroom set of textbooks to be found in the building after Glines took over. Learning through a textbook required full participation and attention. There were textbooks available in the library for students who wanted to self-teach themselves about a specific topic, but textbook learning was not an objective of the school. In the classroom, the students told the teacher what they wanted to learn about, and the teacher taught them. Unlike a normal school in which the teacher follows a selected curriculum.

Aside from the changes made to the curriculum, the administration decided to remove as many desks from the classroom as they could. There were a few desks that were available for students to study, but other than that, they were an unnecessary part of learning. Walls were torn down to eliminate the classroom effect. Although there were still classrooms, the goal was to make the rooms at Wilson more welcoming.

Enrollment for the school was always full. Many families became very upset when put on a waiting list for their children to be enrolled at Wilson. The school was designed to house five hundred students, but by the mid- 1970’s, it was home to six hundred. With only twenty-five students admitted in each of the elementary “grades” and fifty students enrolled in the secondary “grades”, many people were denied the opportunity to attend the innovative school.

The peculiar ways of the Wilson Campus School went on from the arrival of Don Glines in 1968 until the closing of the school in 1977. Once the news of the closing school reached the community, many rallies were held in protest. The school had made such an impact on the community that no one wanted to see it end. After much debate from the state legislature and the Mankato public school system, the state decided they would no longer provide funding for the school. The Wilson Campus School could not survive without the financial support of the state, so after the spring quarter in 1977, Wilson closed it’s doors to the many students it had reached throughout the years.

The Wiecking Center located on the MSU campus

After the Campus School was closed, it became a building that served a number of academic and administrative departments for Mankato State. In 1979, it was renamed the Wiecking Center in honor of Anna and Emma Wiecking, who together served Mankato State for 76 years as members of the faculty (Faust, 58). Today the Wiecking Center is home to many classrooms and offices, as well as organizations including Minnesota State’s Army R.O.T.C. headquarters.

Don Glines had a truly innovative vision to create the best laboratory school in the country. His ideas and operations changed the lives of many people throughout the years. Although the Wilson Campus School is no longer in operation, the memories and history of the school will remain in Mankato for a lifetime. Cassie Johnson, F01