THE REAL AND THE IDEAL SCHOOL
This chapter will have reference to the one-room rural school as it has
existed in the past and as it still exists in many places; it will also
discuss the rural school as it ought to be. It is assumed that, although
consolidation is spreading rapidly, the one-room rural school as an
institution will continue to exist for an indefinite time. Under
favorable conditions it probably should continue to exist; for, as we
shall see, it has many excellent features which are real advantages.
=The Building.=--The old-fashioned country schoolhouse was in many
respects a pitiable object. The "little red schoolhouse" in story and
song has been the object of much praise. As an ideal creation it may be
deserving of admiration, but this cannot be asserted of it as a reality.
The common type was an ordinary box-shaped building without
architecture, without a plan, and, as a rule, without care or repair.
Frequently it stood for years without being repainted, and in the midst
of chaotic and ill-cared-for surroundings. The contract for building it
was usually awarded to some carpenter who was also given _carte blanche_
to do as he pleased in regard to its construction, the only provision
being that he keep within the amount of money allowed--probably eight
hundred or a thousand dollars. The usual result was the plainest kind of
building, without conveniences of any kind. If a blackboard were
provided in the specifications (which were often oral rather than
written), it was perhaps placed in such a position as to be useless. In
the course of my experience as county superintendent of schools, I once
visited a rural school in which the blackboard began at the height of a
man's head and extended to the ceiling, the carpenter probably thinking
that its one purpose was to display permanently the teacher's program.
=No System of Ventilation.=--No system of ventilation was provided in
former days, and in some schoolhouses such is the condition to-day.
Nevertheless, within the past fifteen years, there has been a gratifying
improvement in this direction. It used to be necessary to secure fresh
air, if at all, by opening windows. In some sections, where the climate
is mild, this is the best method of ventilation; but certainly, in
northern latitudes where the winters are long and cold, some system of
forced or automatic ventilation should be provided. It may not be amiss
to assert that it would be an excellent plan to decide first upon a good
system of ventilation and then to build the schoolhouse around it.
Without involving great expense there are simple systems of ventilation
and heating combined which are very efficient for such houses. In
former times, and in some places even yet, the usual method of heating
was by an unjacketed stove which made the pupils who sat nearest it
uncomfortably warm, while those in the farther corners were shivering
with cold. With new systems of ventilation there is an insulating jacket
which equalizes the temperature of the room by heating the fresh air and
distributing it evenly.
It is strange how slowly people change their habits and even their
opinions. Many are ignorant of the fact that in an unventilated
schoolroom each child is breathing over and over again an atmosphere
vitiated by the air exhaled from the lungs of every child in the room.
The fact that twenty to forty pupils are often housed in
poorly-ventilated schools accounts for much sickness and disease among
country children. Whatever it is that makes air "fresh," and healthful,
that factor is not found under the conditions described. Changes in the
temperature and movement of the air are, no doubt, important in securing
a healthful physiological reaction, but air contaminated and befouled by
bodies and lungs has stupefying effects which cannot be ignored.
Frequent change of air is essential.
=The Surroundings.=--The typical country schoolhouse, as it existed in
the past, and as it frequently exists to-day, has not sufficient land to
form a good yard and a playground appropriate for its needs. The farmer
who sold or donated the small tract of land often plows almost to the
very foundation walls. There are usually no trees near by to afford
shelter or to give the place a homelike and attractive appearance. Some
trees may have been planted, but owing to neglect they have all died
out, and nothing remains but a few dead and unsightly trunks. There is
usually no fence around the school yard, and the outbuildings are
frequently a disgrace, if not a positive menace to the children's
morals. If a choice had to be made it would be better to allow children
to grow up in their native liberty and wildness without a school
"education" than to have them subjected to mental and moral degradation
by the vicious suggestions received in some of these places. Weak
teachers have a false modesty in regard to such conditions and school
boards are often thoughtless or negligent.
=The Interior.=--Within the building there is frequently no adequate
equipment in the way of apparatus, supplementary reading, or reference
books of any kind. There are no decorations on the walls except such as
are put there by mischievous children. The whole situation both inside
and out brings upon one a feeling of desolation. Men and women who live
in reasonably comfortable homes near by allow the school home of their
precious children to remain for years unattractive and uninspiring in
every particular. Again this is the result of ignorance,
thoughtlessness, or negligence--a negligence that comes alarmingly close
to guilt.
=Small, Dead School.=--In many a lone rural schoolhouse may be found
ten to twenty small children; and behind the desk a teacher holding only
a second or third grade elementary or county certificate. The whole
institution is rather tame and weak, if not dead; it is anything but
stimulating (and if education means anything it means stimulation). It
is this kind of situation which has led in recent years to a discussion
of the rural school as one of the problems most urgently demanding the
attention of society.
=That Picture and This.=--Let us now consider, after looking upon that
picture, what the situation ought to be. In the first place, there
should be a large school ground, or yard--not less than two acres. The
schoolhouse should be properly located in this tract. The ground as a
whole should be platted by a landscape architect, or at least by a
person of experience and taste. Trees of various kinds should be planted
in appropriate places, and groups of shrubbery should help to form an
attractive setting. The school grounds should have a serviceable fence
and gate and there should be a playground and a school garden.
=Architecture of Building.=--No school building should be erected that
has not first been planned or passed upon by an architect; this is now
required by law in some states. A building with handsome appearance and
with appropriate appointments is but a trifle, if any, more costly than
one that has none. Art of all kinds is a valuable factor in the
education of children and of people generally; and a building, beautiful
in construction, is no exception to the rule. Every person is educated
by what impresses him. It is only within the last few years that much
attention has been given to the necessity of special architecture in
schoolhouses.
Men of intelligence sometimes draw up their own plans for a building and
then, having become enamored of them, proceed to construct a residence
or a schoolhouse along those lines. If they had shown their plans to an
architect of experience he would probably have pointed out numerous
defects which would have been admitted as soon as observed. Neither the
individual nor the district school boards can afford, in justice to
themselves and the community they represent, to ignore the wide and
varied knowledge of the expert.
=Get Expert Opinion.=--Expert opinion should govern in the matter of
heating and ventilating, in the kind of seating, in the arrangement of
blackboards, in the decorations, and in all such technical and
professional matters. Every rural school should have a carefully
selected library, suited to its needs, including a sufficient number of
reference books. The pupils should have textbooks without delay so that
no time may be wasted in getting started after the opening of school.
The walls should be adorned with a few appropriate and beautiful
pictures.
=Other Surroundings.=--On this school ground there should be a shop of
some kind. The resourceful teacher would find a hundred uses for some
such center of work. The closets should be so placed and so devised as
to be easily supervised. This would prevent them from being moral plague
spots, as is too often the case, as we have already said. There should
be stables for sheltering horses, if the school is, as it should be, a
social center for the community. There should be a flagpole in front of
the schoolhouse, from the top of which the stars and stripes should be
often unfurled to the breeze.
=Number of Pupils.=--In this architecturally attractive building, amid
beautiful surroundings both inside and out, there should be, in order to
have a good rural school, not less than eighteen or twenty pupils. Where
there are fewer the school should be consolidated with a neighboring
school. Twenty pupils would give an assurance of educational and social
life, instead of the dead monotony which often prevails in the smaller
rural school. There should be, during the year, at least eight, and
preferably nine, months of school work.
=It Will Not Teach Alone.=--But with all of these conditions the school
may still be far from effective. All the material equipment--the total
environment of the pupils, both inside and outside the building--may be
excellent, and still we may fail to find there a good school. Garfield
said of his old teacher that Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a
pupil on the other made the best kind of college. This indicates an
essential factor other than the physical equipment.
I remember being once in a store when a man who had bought a saw a few
days previously returned it in a wrathful mood. He was angry through and
through and declared that the saw was utterly worthless. He had brought
it back to reclaim his money. The merchant had a rich vein of humor in
his nature and he listened smilingly to the outburst of angry language.
Then he merely took the saw, opened his till and handed the man his
money, quietly asking, with a twinkle in his eyes for those standing
around, "Wouldn't it saw alone?"
Now, we may have a fine school ground, or site, with a variety of
beautiful trees and clumps of shrubbery; we may have a playground and a
school garden; we may have it all splendidly fenced; the schoolhouse may
have an artistic appearance and may be kept in excellent repair; it may
be well furnished inside with blackboards, seats, library, reference
books, good textbooks, and all else that is needed; it may be
beautifully decorated; it may have twenty or even more pupils, and yet
we may not have a good school. It will not "saw alone"; the one
indispensable factor may still be lacking.
=The Teacher.=--"As is the teacher, so is the school." Mark Hopkins on
the end of a log made a good college, compared with the situation where
the building is good and the teacher poor. The teacher is like the
mainspring in a watch. Without a good teacher there can be no good
school. Live teacher, live school; dead teacher, dead school. The
teacher and the school must be the center of life, of thought, and of
conversation, in a good way, in the neighborhood. The teacher is the
soul of the school; the other things constitute its body. What shall it
profit a community to have a great building and lack a good teacher?
If we were obliged to choose between a good teacher and poor material
conditions and environment on the one hand, and excellent material
conditions and environment and a poor teacher on the other, we should
certainly not hesitate in our choice.
=A Good Rural School.=--Now, if we suppose a really good teacher under
the good conditions described above, we shall have a _good_ rural
school. There is usually better individual work done in such a school
than is possible in a large system of graded schools in a city. In such
a school there is more single-mindedness on the part of pupils and
teacher. These pupils bring to such a school unspoiled minds, minds not
weakened by the attractions and distractions, both day and night, of
city life. In such a school the essentials of a good education are, as a
rule, more often emphasized than in the city. There is probably a truer
perspective of values. Things of the first magnitude are distinguished
from things of the second, fifth, or tenth magnitude. This inability to
distinguish magnitudes is one of the banes of common school education
everywhere--so many things are appraised at the same value.
=The Problem.=--We have tried in this discussion to put before the
reader a fairly accurate picture, on the one hand, of the undesirable
conditions which have too often prevailed, and, on the other, of a rural
school which would be an excellent place in which to receive one's
elementary education. The reader is asked to "look here, upon this
picture, and on this." The transition from the one to the other is one
of the great problems of rural life and of the rural school.
Consolidation of schools, which we shall discuss more at length in a
later chapter, will help to solve the problem of the rural school, and
we give it our hearty indorsement. It is the best plan we know of where
the conditions are favorable; but it is probable that the one-room rural
school will remain with us for a long time to come. Indeed there are
some good reasons why it should remain. Where the good rural school
exists, whether non-consolidated or consolidated, it should be the
center and the soul of rural life in that community--social, economical,
and educational.