The purpose of this paper is three-fold: 1) To explain why speech and drama education is so essential, and what research has indicated that it can accomplish. 2) To look at what is being done in the elementary schools in small Wisconsin communities (with populations of 6000 or less) in the area of speech and drama education and how those schools feel about speech and drama education. 3) To establish a direction in which those small community elementary schools should move in order to make sure that their students get the essential benefit of speech and drama education. A questionnaire was used to acquire the information about Wisconsin's small community elementary school speech and drama education programs. The rest of the material is drawn from the many sources of information on elementary speech and drama education which are available, and from my own experience and feelings as a teacher.