The New Education Part 18

FORENOON

Time Cla.s.s Grade

8:30 Opening Exercises All 8:40 Reading Primary 8:45 Reading First 8:50 Reading Second 8:55 Reading Third 9:00 Reading Sixth 9:10 Grammar Fourth 9:20 Grammar Fifth 9:30 Grammar Sixth 9:40 Grammar Seventh 9:50 Grammar Eighth 10:00 Reading Fourth 10:10 Reading Seventh 10:20 Recess All 10:30 Reading Primary 10:40 Reading First 10:50 Numbers Second 11:00 Numbers Third 11:05 Arithmetic Fourth 11:15 Arithmetic Fifth 11:25 Arithmetic Seventh 11:35 Arithmetic Eighth 11:50 Reading Fifth Noon Noon All

Appalling, do you say? What other word describes it adequately? There are twenty-one teaching periods in the morning; twenty-four in the afternoon. Forty-five times each day that teacher must call up and teach a new cla.s.s. The college professor is "overloaded" with fourteen cla.s.ses a week. This woman had two hundred and twenty-five. Will any one be so absurd as to suppose that she can do them or herself justice?

Consolidation, among its many advantages, reduces the number of cla.s.ses per day, and increases the time which the teacher may devote to each cla.s.s. Note the contrast between that schedule of a one-room teacher and the teaching schedule of a consolidated school teacher in the same county:

TEACHER'S DAILY PROGRAM

FORENOON

Time Cla.s.s Grade

8:30 Opening Exercises All 8:45 Desk 1-B 8:50 Phonetics 1-A 9:00 Phonetics 1-B 9:15 Reading 1-A 9:30 Reading Second 9:45 Rest Exercise All 10:00 Nature All 10:15 Rest All 10:30 Words 1-B 10:50 Words 1-A 11:10 Numbers Second 11:30 History 1-A

The "district," or one-room, schools in Montgomery County, Indiana, have twenty-three pupils per teacher, scattered over six grades. The consolidated schools in the same county show sixteen pupils per teacher, in three grades. While the teacher in the district school averages twenty-seven recitations a day, the teacher in the consolidated school has eleven; but the time per recitation is: district, thirteen minutes; consolidated, twenty-nine minutes. The number of minutes which the district teacher may give to each grade is fifty minutes; the consolidated teacher has one hundred and seventeen minutes per grade.

Badly sprinkled with figures as that statement is, it gives some idea of the increased opportunities for effective teaching in the consolidated school. No teacher can do justice to twenty-seven cla.s.ses per day, and an average recitation period of thirteen minutes is so short as to be almost unworthy of mention.

Most consolidated schools, in addition to the ordinary rooms, have an a.s.sembly room in which lectures, festivals, socials, public meetings, and farmers' inst.i.tutes are held. Acting as a center for community life, the consolidated school takes a real place in the instruction of the community. The big brick or stone building, well constructed and surrounded, as it usually is, by well-kept grounds, furnishes the same kind of local monument that the court house supplies in the county seat.

People point proudly to it as "their" public building. It is an experience of note in traveling across an open farming country to come suddenly upon a splendidly-equipped, two-story school, set down, at a point of vantage, several miles away from the nearest railroad.

The consolidated school at Linden, Montgomery County, Indiana, for example, situated in a town of scarcely three hundred inhabitants, is equipped with gas from its own gas-plant; with steam heat; ample toilet accommodations; an a.s.sembly room; and halls so broad that the primary children may play some of their games there in bad weather.

One of the most widely discussed among consolidated schools is the John Swaney Consolidated School, of Putnam County, Illinois.[22] The John Swaney School occupies a twenty-four acre campus, lying a mile and a half from the nearest village, and ten miles from the nearest town. The agitation for consolidation in Putnam County led John Swaney and his wife to give twenty-four acres as a campus for a local consolidated school. Hence the name and much of the success which has attended the work of the school.

The school cost $15,000, equipped. It is of brick with four cla.s.s-rooms, two laboratories, a library, offices, a manual training shop, a domestic science kitchen, and a bas.e.m.e.nt play-room. The building is lighted, heated, and ventilated in the most modern fashion. The John Swaney School thus came into existence with an equipment adequate for any school and elaborate for a school situated far from the channels of trade and industry.

The course of study organized includes all of the modern specialized work which the effective city school is able to do. Securing good teachers and possessing unique facilities, the school carries boys and girls through a series of years, in which intellectual, experimental, manual, recreational, and social activities combine to make the school the center of community life and community influence.

The school campus is used as a laboratory and a play ground. The trees provide subject matter for a course in horticulture. The fertile land is turned to agricultural use, and the broad expanse of twenty-four acres furnishes additional s.p.a.ce for games and sports.

The social life of this school is no less effective than is its location and equipment. The teachers' cottage, an old school building converted for this purpose, furnishes a center for the life of the teaching staff, and makes a background for the social life of the entire school. There are two strong literary societies, including all of the pupils in the school. Each year plays are presented on the school stage. There are musical organizations, parents' conferences, entertainments, and community gatherings of all descriptions. In every sense, the John Swaney School is a community center.

Prosperity has followed in the wake of this educational development. The John Swaney School is known far and wide, and consequently farm renters and farm buyers alike seek the locality because of the educational opportunities which the school affords for their children, and because of the social opportunities which the community around the school affords for them.

The movement for school consolidation, like many another good movement, originated in Ma.s.sachusetts. From that state it has spread extensively to Indiana, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Idaho, Washington, and a number of other states,--East, West, and South. In every progressive rural community, wherever prosperous farmers and comfortable farm homes are found, there the consolidation movement is being discussed, agitated, or operated.

The movement toward consolidation has been particularly active during the past few years in the South. The Southern States are, for the most part, largely agricultural communities. The rural population far outnumbers the urban population, and it is in these districts, therefore, that the consolidated school can have its greatest influence.

By 1912, the state of Louisiana alone was able to report over 250 consolidated county schools. Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina show themselves almost equally active in forwarding this generally accepted progressive educational movement.

The difficulties involved in consolidation may be summed up under two heads. There is, first of all, the conservatism and prejudice of those people who believe that the things which were good enough for their fathers, are still good enough for them. Secondly, there are the technical difficulties involved in transporting pupils from distant localities to the school center. Roads are bad at certain times of the year. Wagons are costly. Desirable drivers are difficult to secure.

These factors, taken together, make the administrative difficulties of the consolidated school far greater than those of the old-time one-room country school.

The forces operating to overcome these difficulties are destined ultimately to triumph. The widespread acceptance of an agricultural education that followed upon the work of experiment stations, universities and high schools, has convinced even the most reactionary of the old-time group that there are, at least, certain things in the new generation which surpa.s.s, in their economic and social value, the like things of the old. The inroads of scientific agriculture have played havoc with agricultural tradition and conservatism. The obvious merits of the new scheme are destined to overcome the prejudices which the long continuance of the old scheme created.

The technical difficulties of transportation are being met in a number of ways. Wagon builders in various parts of the country are devoting themselves to the designing and building of wagons which will be cheap and effective. State and local authorities are actively engaged in the improvement of roads. The near future promises a standard of transportation facilities that will far surpa.s.s any that the consolidation movement has thus far enjoyed. The details of transportation administration are being worked out variously in different communities, and always with a view to the particular needs of the community involved.

While the disadvantages of consolidation lie mainly in the overcoming of prejudice and the solution of administrative problems, the advantages of consolidation seem to be primarily educational and social. The consolidated school is the only method thus far devised for giving graded school and high school privileges under adequately paid teachers to the inhabitants of rural communities. Again the consolidated school is the only method of securing a school attendance sufficiently large to provide the incentive arising from compet.i.tion and emulation for pupils of each grade or age. Furthermore, the consolidated school, standing out as the most distinctive feature of a rural landscape, is readily converted into a center of rural life and activity where young folks and old folks alike find a common ground for social interests.

The advantages of the rural school are thus summed up by Mabel Carney,[23]--"For the complete and satisfying solution of the problem of rural education and for the general reconstruction and redirection of country life, the consolidated country school is the best agency thus far devised." The reasons for this statement are summed up under seven heads. In the first place, the consolidated school is a democratic, public school, directly in the hands of the people who support it.

Secondly, it is at the door of farm houses and is wholly available, even more available, when public transportation is provided, than the present one-teacher school. Third, every child in the farm community is reached by it. All children may attend because of the transportation facilities afforded. Fourth, the cost of the school is reasonable. Fifth, it accommodates all grades, including the high school. The country high school, by excluding the younger children, denies modern educational facilities to any except pupils of high school grade. Sixth, it preserves a balanced course of study. While educating in terms of farm-life experience, it does not force children prematurely into any vocation, although it prepares them generally for all vocations. Lastly, the consolidated school is the best social and educational center for the rural community that has been thus far organized.

However just may be the judging of a tree by its fruit, the fruit of the consolidation movement seems uniformly good. First, because the children get to school; and second, because after they get there they are taught something worth while.

When the schools of a district are consolidated, transportation must be furnished for the students. Union Township, Montgomery County, Indiana, covering one hundred and six square miles, has replaced thirty-seven district schools with six consolidated schools. Some of the children are brought as far as five miles in wagons, or on the interurban electric cars. The wagon calls at stated hours, and the children must be ready.

Tardiness is therefore reduced, until one county reports ten hundred and ninety-one cases of tardiness in its district schools (for 1910-11) and ninety-two cases in consolidated schools, although in this county there are more children in the consolidated than in the district schools.

Then, too, the children stay later in the consolidated schools. In Montgomery County, Indiana, the children who have not finished the eighth grade and who are staying away from school const.i.tute twenty-nine per cent. of the population in the consolidated schools, as against sixty-three per cent. in the district schools. The Vernon consolidated school in Trumbull County, Ohio, has enrolled nearly nine-tenths of the children of school age. Before the consolidation only three-fifths were in school.

Theoretically, the introduction of agriculture, manual training, and other applied courses which are found in most consolidated schools, should have some effect on the lives of the children. In order to show its extent Superintendent Hall, of Montgomery County, Indiana, asked one thousand children (five hundred in district schools and five hundred in consolidated schools) what they proposed to do after they left school.

Arranged according to the kind of school in which the children were, the answers showed as follows:

_District_ _Consolidated_ _Chosen Profession_ _Schools_ _Schools_

Teaching 151 122 Business 123 73 Farming 92 129 Law 55 21 Mechanics 48 86 Medicine 13 9 Ministry 12 4 Stock-breeding 3 41 Miscellaneous 3 15 --- --- Total 500 500

Agricultural studies--stock-breeding and farming--and mechanics show up strongly in the consolidated schools, at the expense of teaching, business and law in the district schools. While such figures do not prove anything, they indicate the direction in which the minds of consolidated school children are moving.

Eli M. Rapp, of Berks County, Pennsylvania, voices the spirit of the consolidation movement when he says:

"The consolidated school furnishes the framework for a well-organized, rural education. Its course of study is broader, its appeal is stronger, its service to the community more p.r.o.nounced, and, best of all, it holds the children. Progressive rural communities have wakened up to the fact that unless their children are educated together there is a strong probability that they will be ignorant separately."

III Making the One-Room Country School Worth While

The brilliant success of the consolidated schools reveals the possibilities of team-work in rural education, but it cannot detract from the wonderful work which has been done, and is still being done, by the one-room rural school. Always there will be districts so spa.r.s.ely settled that the consolidated school is not feasible. In such localities the one-room school, transformed as it may be by enlightened effort, must still be relied upon to provide education. Nor is this outcome undesirable. The one-room country school bristles with educational possibilities. Under intelligent direction, even its c.u.mbersome organization may yield a plenteous harvest of useful knowledge and awakened interest.

The droning reading lesson and the sing-song multiplication table are heard no more in the progressive country school. In their place are English work, which reflects the spirit of rural things, and the arithmetic of the farm. Here is a boy of thirteen, in a one-room country school, writing an essay on "Selecting, Sowing and Testing Seed Corn,"

an essay amply ill.u.s.trated by pen and ink drawings of growing corn, corn in the ear and individual corn kernels. Mabel Gorman asks, "Does it pay the farmer to protect the birds?" After describing the services of birds in destroying weed seeds and dangerous insects and emphasizing their beauty and cheerfulness, she concludes: "The question is, does it pay the farmer to protect the birds?" The only answer is that anything that adds to the attractiveness of the farm is worthy of cultivation. Happily a farmer who protects the birds secures a double return--increased profit from his crop and increased pleasure of living. Viola Lawson, writing on the subject, "How to Dust and Sweep," makes some pertinent comments. "I think if a house is very dirty, a carpet sweeper is not a very good thing. A broom is best, because you can't get around the corners with a sweeper." Note this hint to the school board: "We spend about one-third of our time in the school house, so it is very important to keep the dust down. The directors ought to let the school have dustless chalk. If they did there wouldn't be so much throat trouble among teachers and children. Then so many children are so careless about cleaning their feet, boys especially. They go out and curry the horses, and clean out the stables, and get their feet all nasty. Then they come to school and bring that dust into the schoolroom. Isn't that awful?"

Viola is thirteen.

Over in eastern Wisconsin Miss Ellen B. McDonald, County Superintendent of Oconto County, has her children engaged in contests all the year round--growing corn, sugar beets, Alaska peas and potatoes; the boys making axe handles and the girls weaving rag carpet. During the summer Miss McDonald writes to the children who are taking part in the contests suggesting methods and urging good work. One of the letters began with the well-known lines:

Say, how do you hoe your row, young man, Say, how do you hoe your row, Do you hoe it fair, do you hoe it square, Do you hoe it the best you know?

"How are you getting along with the contests?" continues the letter.

"Are you taking good care of your beets, peas, corn or garden? Remember that it will pay you well for all the work you do upon it." In reply one girl writes: "My corn is a little over five feet high. My tomatoes have little tomatoes on, but mamma's are just beginning to blossom. My beets are growing fine. I planted them very late. My lettuce is much better than mamma's. We have been eating it right along." Mark the note of exultation over the fact that her crop is ahead of her mother's.

Sometimes the school child brings from school knowledge which materially helps his father. Here is a Wisconsin English lesson, and a proof of the saying, "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings," all in one.

These country boys and girls take an interest in English work, because it deals with the things they know. Miss Ellen B. McDonald, County Superintendent of Schools in Oconto County, Wisconsin, publishes a column of school news in each of the three county newspapers. Here is one of her contributions, in the form of an English lesson and a counting lesson combined: (A "rag-baby tester" is a device for determining the fertility of seed corn before it is planted.)