The Challenge of the Country Part 17

The building is an attractive brick building located among beautiful shade trees. It contains four recitation rooms besides a large auditorium used for lectures, concerts and basket-ball; two laboratories, two library and office rooms, girls' play room, cloak room, and a room in the bas.e.m.e.nt for manual training which is well equipped. It has apparatus also for teaching cooking and sewing. It is equipped with steam heat, running water by air-pressure system, and a gasolene gas generator. The campus is ample for agricultural work besides the football and baseball fields and tennis courts and the home for the five resident teachers.

_A Rural High School Course of Study_

In the high school department of this consolidated school a well balanced curriculum is followed, based upon the special needs of rural life, strong in vocational courses, yet not lacking in the liberal culture studies. It includes the following: _First Year_, English I, Algebra, Physiology, Agronomy I or Latin, Household Science or Manual Training, Physical Geography, Horticulture or Latin. _Second Year_, English II, Algebra, Geometry, Zoology, Ancient History, Botany, Animal Husbandry or Household Science, Drawing and Music. _Third Year_, English III, Chemistry, Agronomy II or Latin or Household Science, English History, Animal Husbandry. _Fourth Year_, English IV, Physics, Household Science or Agronomy III, American History, Bookkeeping, Arithmetic and Civics. The farm laboratory work is in charge of experts from the Illinois Experiment Station.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Domestic Economy Rooms, Macdonald Consolidated School, Guelph, Canada.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Manual Training Department of the Same School.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Manual Training in a Small Rural School, Edgar County, Illinois.]

As Dr. Warren H. Wilson states so well, "The teaching of agriculture is not for the making of farmers, but men and women. It must be more than a mere school of rural money-making. The teaching of agriculture needed in the schools is for the purpose of training in country life. The country school must make the open country worth while. It will teach agriculture as the basis of an ideal life, rather than as a quick way of profits."

However, though this is strictly true of the boys who study agriculture, if they can actually become proficient enough to give their fathers points, the evident "practical" value of the modern school will appeal so strongly to the farmers that its future support is a.s.sured. The farmers cannot be blamed for having little love for the school which alienates their children from country life; but schools which really train for rural citizenship will be appreciated by the country folks. And in time there will be more John Swaneys, men who will show their love for a real school for country life by endowing it after the manner of the old New England academies.

_Elementary Agriculture and School Gardens_

To delay the teaching of agriculture until the high school years would be to lose its most strategic value. It should be a regular course in all rural schools, beginning before the natural rural interests have been turned to discontent. As a rural educator says, "Let them early learn to know nature and to love it, and to know that they are indigenous to the soil; that here they must live and die. Give us many such schools, and the farm youth is in no danger of leaving the farm."

Although agricultural teaching has been slowly winning its way into our American schools, it has been a feature of even the primary schools in France since 1879 and in most other European countries more recently. The wonderful agricultural revival of Denmark dates from the introduction of this subject in the schools. Elementary agriculture is taught in every rural district of the land, and it gives the children that love for the very soil which makes Danish patriotism unique.

The Macdonald movement in Canada, backed by the government, has put that country well in the lead on our continent in this matter. It is spreading fast now in the States, however. Seven states in the South alone require by law agricultural instruction in rural schools. Many states now require normal school students to prepare to teach the subject as an essential branch of rural education; so that its future is a.s.sured.

The laboratory work in school gardens is a most interesting feature of great value. Only recently has the garden movement developed in America, beginning in Roxbury, Boston, in 1891; but every European nation but England popularized it long ago. Comenius believed that "a garden should be connected with every school," and his country, Moravia, early enacted this conviction into law. The rural schools of Prussia introduced school gardens as early as 1819; and they are now common everywhere in continental Europe. The movement is now spreading fast in this country and has proved very successful in stimulating interest in listless boys. In Dayton, Ohio, school gardens were established in 1903, and it has been observed there that boys taking gardening make 30% more progress than others in their studies. The moral effects are sometimes notable, especially in vicious surroundings.

III. Allies of the School in Rural Education.

_School Improvement Leagues_

This movement started in Maine, where it has over 60,000 members, and has spread to other states. It seeks to stimulate the loyalty of pupils, teachers and patrons to the schools in every feasible way. It gives coherence and direction to a rising local pride in a successful school and helps greatly to develop a local school spirit. When once aroused, this interest can be directed in any useful way which is most needed at the time. It often finds most natural expression in beautifying the school grounds with shrubbery, trees and flowers, and in furnishing the rooms with pictures and artistic decorations of real merit. Rural communities are proverbially lacking in aesthetic taste, and this is the best method conceivable for developing it. From a well-kept schoolyard, and schoolrooms relieved of their bareness by copies of the great masterpieces, there will radiate all through the township the spirit of order and beauty which will bless the whole community.

_Rural Libraries and Literature_

The state of Ma.s.sachusetts, where the first free public library was opened long ago, now has such an inst.i.tution in every town and city of the Commonwealth. In most states, however, libraries in rural communities are not common; but in many states traveling libraries are obtainable from the state librarian which vastly broaden the mental outlook of the country people. In these days of abundant books, it is easier to secure books than it is to be sure that the books will get read. Rural reading circles and literary clubs can serve their communities well by helping to popularize the reading habit, and advising in the choice of books.

So vast has the country literature become in recent years, one can little imagine the great educational service of the numerous farm journals and magazines of country life. Rare is the farmer's home where none of them enters. They have apparently great influence in broadening the horizons of the farm home as well as teaching the people the newer ideals of our rural civilization. So popular has the topic of rural life recently become, many non-rural magazines frequently bring it before their readers, notably the _World's Work_. As a magazine devoted to all the interests of the country life movement, and frankly religious in its purpose, _Rural Manhood_ is unique in its sphere. It is the organ of the Rural Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation and by its remarkably broad survey of rural social movements has made itself indispensable to lovers of the country.

_Farmers' Inst.i.tutes and Government Cooperation_

s.p.a.ce forbids even the enumeration of all the agencies and methods by which the standards of rural education are being raised. Both state and national governments, the state experiment stations and the department of agriculture at Washington are constantly reporting the latest results of agricultural science and investigation both in the form of printed bulletins and public sessions of Farmers' Inst.i.tutes and similar occasions. The great majority of working farmers have not yet learned to value and to use these privileges as they should; but the appreciative ones who do use them are becoming constantly better informed about the secrets of country life and the wonderful ways of nature. The great national organization of the Grange, by its local discussions of farm topics and its effective lecture work, is another of the great educational forces in rural life, and the rural church and minister often have a fine educational opportunity, especially in country communities where the educational equipment is meager and the unmet need is great.

_Agricultural Colleges and their Extension Work_

Essentially a part of the government service, the state colleges of agriculture with their learned faculties of rural experts are the ultimate authorities in agriculture and all rural interests, and therefore are both the climax and the ultimate source of education for country life. With the remarkable popularity the past five years of rural study and the strong trend toward the rural professions, the agricultural colleges are probably growing faster than any other schools in the land. The Ma.s.sachusetts State College has doubled in numbers and doubtless in efficiency in the past five years, and many other schools have shown remarkable development. With a faculty of a hundred men, and a budget this year of half a million dollars, the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell has become in reality a great school of liberal culture interpreted in terms of country life. Its enrolment has multiplied by five in the past nine years.

The extension work accomplished by these and similar inst.i.tutions is wonderfully broad and more and more serviceable to the people of their several states, as their community of interest is increasingly appreciated. The teachers are no longer "mere book farmers." They are constantly out among the people for every variety of social service; and the people, once or twice a year during the great "Farmers' Weeks" flock to the college by the hundred with no feeling of restraint but of actual ownership.

It is thus, from the humblest "box-car school" to the great university, that the people of the open country are being educated to appreciate their privileges and to live a more effective country life. It is a great educational movement, weak and halting here and there, but moving on with a better sense of unity and a clearer vision of the goal, with every pa.s.sing decade. It all gives us courage to believe that the providence of G.o.d has in store for our rural America not the stolid domination of a rural peasantry, mere renters and pirates of the soil, but ultimately an enlightened, progressive citizenship, alert for progress and unswerving in their loyalty to "the holy land."

TEST QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER VI

1.--Why do many rural communities take so little interest in their schools?

2.--Show how most rural schools train country children away from the farms to the city instead of fitting them for country life.

3.--How does the expense of American rural schools compare, per capita, with the expense of the city schools?

4.--How can the country boys and girls be given a fair chance in our public school system?

5.--In what ways does the district school plan work badly as a unit of management and of taxation?

6.--What is wrong with the construction of most country school buildings?

7.--Why is the consolidated school in the town or village a bad thing for children from the farms?

8.--State the efficiency argument for consolidation of rural schools.

9.--Describe the Indiana law on this subject and give your opinions about it.

10.--Show the superior advantages of the purely rural type of centralized school.

11.--Describe the consolidated rural school in Illinois, known as the "John Swaney School," and tell what you like about it.

12.--How do you think a high school course of study in the country ought to differ from that in the city?

13.--Why should agriculture, domestic science, animal husbandry, et cetera, be taught in rural schools? How early would you begin?

14.--Compare the history of specific education for rural life in Europe and in America.

15.--What can you say about school gardens as a feature in rural education?

16.--How can "School Improvement Leagues" become powerful allies of the country school forces?

17.--What are some of the educational possibilities of rural libraries?

18.--In your experience what educational service can Farmers' Inst.i.tutes render the farming community?

19.--Show something of the broad field of the agricultural colleges and their extension work, and the part they take in rural education.

20.--Write out concisely the best statement you can make of the immediate needs in rural education and the constructive policy you would propose to meet these needs.