VITALIZING RURAL EDUCATION
I The Call of the Country
There is a call of the land just as there is a call of the city, though
the call of the city has sounded so insistently during the past century
that men innumerable, heeding it, have cast in their lot with the
throngs of city dwellers. Yet the city proves so unsatisfying that
thousands are turning from its rows of brick houses and lines of paved
streets to the fruit trees, dairy herds, market gardens and broad acres
of the countryside. The call of the city is answered by a call which is
becoming equally distinct--the call "Back to the Land."
The ten-acre lot may not be any nearer paradise than the "Great White
Way," but there is about it a breadth of quiet wholesomeness which
cannot make its presence felt in the bustle of the clanging cars and the
rushing whirl of crowded streets. The unsmoked blue of the sky is over
the country, as are the fragrance of flowers, woods and mown grass; the
stars are brilliant by night, and by day the birds sing, and the cows
and barnyard fowls talk philosophically together. The children have room
to run and play between their periods of work, which is very near of kin
to blessedness, because, aside from being instructive, it binds the
child into the family group in a way that factory work can never do. The
country cries health and enthusiasm to the world-weary soul as it does
to the barefoot boy. Whittier was very near the heart of things when he
wrote:
Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lips, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill.
Despite the loneliness, isolation and overwork in some country places,
the rural life is, on the whole, very rich in--
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor's rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools.
Country life holds a great promise for the future--a promise of vigorous
manhood and womanhood, and of earnest, sane living. Through the rapidly
progressing country school, more perhaps than through any other agency,
this promise may be fulfilled. There are two possibilities in the
development of the country school. On the one hand, several one-room
schools may be consolidated into one central graded school, to which the
children are transported at public expense; on the other hand, the
old-time, one-room school may be reorganized and vitalized.
II Making Bricks with Straw
Even the doughtiest son of the soil must needs admit that the farmer of
the past, living secluded in his house or village, was provincial,
narrow, bigoted and individualistic. Times are rapidly changing,
however, and out of the old desolation of rural individualism there is
arising the spirit of wholesome, virile co-operation, which has
transformed the face of many a country district almost in the twinkling
of an eye. Nowhere is this co-operative spirit better expressed than in
the consolidated country schools, which are organized, like the city
school, by subjects and grades.
Considered from any viewpoint, the consolidated school is superior, as a
form of organization, to the district school. Rather, the consolidated
school permits organization, and the district school does not. Wherever
it has been tried the testimony in favor of consolidation is
overwhelming.
"Comparison," cried one county superintendent in consternation.
"Comparison! There is no comparison. The old one-room school, like the
one-horse plough, has seen its day. The farmers in this country, after
figuring it out, have reached the conclusion that the one-room school is
in the same class with a lot of other old-fashioned machinery--good in
its day, but not good enough for them. That is why over eighty per cent
of our schools have been consolidated. You see it's this way: The
farmers need labor badly, and rather than see their sons go to a school
where they are called on once or twice a day by a sadly overworked
teacher they would put them to work on the farm. The consolidated school
wins them with its good course of study and the boys stay in school."
That is the first, and perhaps the most vital, advantage of the
consolidated school--it permits the enlargement of the course of study.
Sewing, cooking, agriculture, manual training, drawing and music, have
all been introduced, because the teachers have time for them. High
school work has been added, too. The consolidated school, in so far as
the course of study is concerned, is very nearly on a par with the
graded school of the city.
Have you ever attended a one-room country school? If you have not you
can form but the faintest idea of what it means to the teacher. Her day
is so split up with little periods of class work that she can never do
anything thoroughly. Here, for example, is an average schedule of work
for a one-room class in Indiana:
DAILY PROGRAM
FORENOON
Time Class 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 class. The college professor is "overloaded" with fourteen
classes 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 classes
per day, and increases the time which the teacher may devote to each
class. 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 Class 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 classes 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
assembly room in which lectures, festivals, socials, public meetings,
and farmers' institutes 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 assembly 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 class-rooms,
two laboratories, a library, offices, a manual training shop, a domestic
science kitchen, and a basement 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 space 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 Massachusetts. 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 surpass, 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 surpass 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 competition 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 constitute 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 pronounced, 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 sparsely
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 cumbersome
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 illustrated 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.)
"My dear Miss McDonald:
"The rag-baby tester is causing a whole lot of excitement. We
have tested one lot and this morning started another. We notice
one thing in particular, the corn which was dried by stove heat
sprouts perfectly, while that dried in granaries, etc., is not
sprouting at all. Last fall papa saved his seed corn, selecting
it very carefully, and hung it up in the granary to dry. I
selected several ears from the same field and at the same time,
and dried them on the corn tree at school. Upon testing them
this spring papa's corn does not sprout at all, while mine is
sprouting just exactly as good as the Golden Glow sent out to
the school children. This morning I am testing some more of
papa's, and if that fails he will have to buy his seed, a thing
he has never had to do before. We tested the corn secured from
four of our interested farmers last week and one lot germinated;
the other three did not. This morning pupils from seven
different homes brought seed to be tested. We had a package of
last year's seed left and tested several kernels of that, as
well as some sent out this year, and we think last year's seed
is testing a little the better."
The new arithmetic, like the new English, deals with the country. It
seems a little odd, just at first, to see boys and girls standing at the
board computing potato yields, milk yields, the contents of granaries,
the price of bags and the cost of barns and chicken houses; yet what
more natural than that the country child should figure out his and
perhaps his father's problems in the arithmetic class at school?
The geography is no less pertinent. Soil formation, drainage, the
location and grouping of farm buildings, the physical characteristics of
the township and of the county are matters of universal interest and
concern. Every school in Berks County, Pennsylvania, is provided with a
fine soil survey map of the county, made by the United States Geological
Survey. What more ideal basis for rural geography?
Here and there a country school is waking up to the physical needs of
country children. "Country boys are not symmetrically developed,"
asserts Superintendent Rapp, of Berks County. "They are flat-chested and
round-shouldered." That is interesting, indeed. Mr. Rapp explains: "It
is because of the character of their work, nearly all of which tends to
flatten the chest. Whether or not that is the explanation, the fact
remains, and with it the no less evident fact that it is the business of
the school to correct the defects. In an effort to do this we have
worked out a series of fifty games which the children are taught in the
schools." In May a great "Field Day and Play Festival" is held, to which
the entire county is invited. Each school trains and sends in its teams.
Trolleys, buggies, autos and hay wagons contribute their quota, until
five thousand people have gathered in an out-of-the-way spot to help the
children enjoy themselves.
Mr. Rapp is a great believer in activity. Tireless himself, he has fifty
teacher-farmers--men who teach in the winter and farm in the summer--an
excellent setting for country boys and girls. He believes in activity
for children, too. "If the school appealed as it ought to the motor
energies of children, instead of having to drive them in, you would have
to drive them out." To prove his point Mr. Rapp cites the instance of
one man teacher, who, before the days of manual training in the schools,
decided to have manual training in his one-room Berks County school.
"He did the work himself," Mr. Rapp says, "dug out the cellar and set up
a shop in it. The only help he had was the help of the pupils, and the
work was done in recess time and after school. They made their own
tools, cabinets, book-cases, picture-frames, clock-frames, and anything
else they wanted. And do you know, when it got dark, that man would
send the children home from the school in order to be rid of them."
Consolidated schools help. They make rural education broader and easier,
but the one-room country school, presided over by a live teacher, may be
made worth while. Social events, sports, contests in farm work and
domestic work, studies couched in terms of the country, may all prove
potent factors in shaping the child and the community.
IV Repainting the Little Red Schoolhouse
Without, as well as within, the little red school-house may be
transformed. The course of study may establish a standard in rural
thought. The rural school-house may set a standard of rural architecture
and landscape gardening.
How typical of old-time country schools are the lines:
Still sits the school-house by the road,
A ragged beggar sunning.
Around it still the sumacs grow,
And blackberry vines are running.
The unpainted, rough exterior of the little school vied with the unkempt
school grounds. Both supplied subjects for artistic treatment. To the
consternation of the poet and the romancer, the modern one-room school
is painted, and the school yard, instead of being filled with a thicket
of blackberry and sumac, is laid out for playground, flower-beds and
gardens. The up-to-date country school, while far less picturesque, is
much more architectural and more useful.
The State Superintendent of Education in Wisconsin furnishes free to
local school boards plans of modern one-room schools. With a hall at
each end for wraps, an improved heating and ventilating device, and all
of the light coming from the north side, where there is one big window
from near the floor to the ceiling, these buildings, costing from two
thousand dollars up, provide in every way for the health and comfort of
the children. The superintendent may go farther than to suggest in
Wisconsin, however, for if a school building becomes dilapidated he may
condemn it, and then state aid to local education is refused until
suitable buildings are provided. The law has proved an excellent
deterrent to educational parsimony.
Superintendent Kern, of Rockford, Illinois, has done particularly
effective work in beautifying his schools. Within the schools are
tastefully painted and decorated. Outside there are flower-beds, hedges,
individual garden plots, neatly-cut grass, and all of the other
necessaries for a well-kept yard. No longer crude and unsightly, the
Rockford school yards are models which any one in the neighborhood may
copy with infinite advantage. As the school becomes the center of
community life local pride makes more and more demands. Could you visit
some of the finer school buildings in Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin and
Illinois you would be better able to understand why men boast of "Our
School" in the same tone that they use when boasting of their corn
yields.
V A Fairyland of Rural Education
You will perhaps be somewhat skeptical--you big folks who have ceased to
believe in little people--when you hear that out in western Iowa there
is a county which is an educational fairyland. Yet if you had traveled
up and down the country, gone into the wretched country school
buildings, seen the lack-luster teaching and the indifferent scholars,
which are so appallingly numerous; if you had read in the report of the
investigating committee which has just completed its survey of Wisconsin
rural schools the statement that in many districts the hog pens were on
a better plane of efficiency than the school houses; if you had seen the
miserable inadequacy of country schools North, East, South and West, and
had then been transported into the midst of the school system of Page
County, Iowa, you would have been sure that you had passed through the
looking-glass into the queer world beyond. Yet Page County is there--a
fairyland presided over by a really, truly fairy.
The schools in Page County, Iowa, which, by the way, is one of the best
corn counties in Iowa, are little republics in which the children have
the fun, do the work and grow up strong and kind. Each school has its
song, its social gatherings, its clubs, and its teams. How you would
have pricked up your ears if you had driven past the Hawley School and
heard a score of lusty voices shouting the school song to the tune of
"Everybody's Doing It!"
December was the time of the Page County contests, when each school sent
its exhibits of dressmaking, cooking, rope-splicing, barn-planning,
essay-writing and its corn-judging teams to the county seat, where they
were displayed and judged very much as they would be at a county fair.
Further, it was the time when the prizes were to be awarded to the boy
having the best acre of alfalfa, of corn and of potatoes. (Queer, isn't
it, but last year a girl got the first prize for the best crop of
potatoes.) December is a great month in Page County. This year more than
three thousand exhibits were sent into Clarinda, the county seat. Every
boy and girl is on tip-toe with expectancy, and after the awards the
successful schools are as proud as turkey cocks.
"We have never taken the thing seriously here before," explained a
farmer who had left his work in mid-afternoon and come in to teach the
boys of a school how to judge seed corn. "This year we're going down
there to Clarinda for all that's in it." If he hadn't meant what he said
he would scarcely have been spending his hours in the school-room. If
the Hawleyville boys had not been thoroughly in earnest they would not
have been there, after school, learning how to judge corn.
The community around each school is agog with excitement while
preparations are being made for the county contest. The men folk advise
the boys regarding their corn-judging and their models of farm
implements and farm buildings, while the women give lessons galore in
the mysteries of country cooking, for it is no small matter to be hailed
and crowned as the best fourteen-year-old cook in Page County, Iowa.
One Page County teacher conducts her domestic science work in the
evening at the homes of the girls. On a given day of each week the
entire class visits the home of one of the girls, prepares, cooks and
eats a meal. What an opportunity to inculcate lessons in domestic
economy at first hand! What a chance to show the behind-the-time
housekeeper (for there are such even in Page County) how things are
being done!
Because Page County is a great corn county much school time is devoted
to corn. In every school hangs a string of seed corn which is brought in
by the boys in the fall, dried during the winter, and in the spring
tested for fertility. A Babcock milk-tester, owned by the county,
circulates from school to school, enabling the children to test the
productivity of their cows. Teams of boys, under the direction of the
school, make their own road drags, and care for stretches of road--from
one to five miles. The boys doing the best work are rewarded with
substantial prizes. Do you begin to suspect the reason for the interest
which the big folks take in the doings of Page County's little folks? It
is because the little folks go to schools which are a vital part of the
community.
Three times a year there is, in each school, a gathering of the friends
and parents of the children. Sometimes they celebrate Thanksgiving,
sometimes they have a "Parents' Day." Anyway, the boys decorate the
school, the girls cook cake and candy, and the parents come and have a
good evening. The children begin with their school song, sung, perhaps,
like this Kile School song, to the tune of "Home, Sweet Home":
1. What school is the dearest,
The neatest and best,
What school is more pleasant,
More dear than the rest,
Whose highways and byways
Have charms from each day,
Whose roads and alfalfa,
They have come to stay.
_Chorus._
Kile, Kile, our own Kile,
We love her, we'll praise her,
We'll all work for Kile.
2. Whose corn is so mellow,
Whose cane is so sweet,
Whose taters are so mellow,
Whose coal's hard to beat,
Whose Ma's and whose Grandpa's
Are brave, grand and true,
Their love for their children
They never do rue.
There follows a program like the program of any other social evening,
except that very often the parents take part as well as the children.
The things are interesting, too, like this little duet, sung at the
Thanksgiving entertainment by two of the Kile girls:
1. If a body pays the taxes,
Surely you'll agree,
That a body earns a franchise,
Whether he or she.
_Chorus._
Every man now has the ballot,
None, you know, have we,
But we have brains and we can use them,
Just as well as he.
2. If a city's just a household,
As it is, they say,
Then every city needs housecleaning,
Needs it right away.
3. Every city has its fathers,
Honors them, I we'en,
But every city must have mothers,
That the house be clean.
4. Man now makes the laws for women,
Kindly, too, at that,
But they often seem as funny
As a man-made hat.
The grand event of this fairyland comes in the summer, when the boys and
girls from all of the schools go to the county seat for a summer camp,
where, between attending classes and lectures, playing games and
reveling in the joys of camp life, they come to have a very much broader
view of the world and a more intense interest in one another.
They are only one-room schools out there in Page County, but they have
adapted themselves to the needs of the community, focusing the attention
of parents and children alike on the bigger things in rural life, and
the ways in which a school may help a countryside to appreciate and
enjoy them. So the boys and girls of Page County have their fairyland,
and are devoted to the good fairy, who, in the shape of a generous,
kindly county superintendent, helps them to enjoy it.
VI The Task of the Country School
The teacher of a one-room school in Berks County was quizzing a class
about Columbus.
"Where was he born?" she queried.
"In Genoa."
"And where is Genoa, Ella?"
"On the Mediterranean Sea," replied Ella promptly.
"What was his business?" was her next question.
"He was a sailor," ventured a bright boy. "A sailor," chorused the
class.
"Why was he a sailor, Edith?" Edith shook her head.
"Yes, George."
"Why, because he lived on the sea."
"Of course. Now think a minute. Do many of the boys from this country
become sailors?"
"No'm," from the class.
"What do they become?"
"Farmers," cried the class, hissing the "f" and flattening the "a."
Certainly, the boys in a farming community, brought up on the farm,
naturally become farmers, yet in the interim, between babyhood and
farmer life, they go to school. How absurdly easy the task of the
school--to determine that they shall be intelligent, progressive,
enthusiastic, up-to-date farmers. The girls, too, marry farmers, keep
farmers' homes and raise farmers' sons. How simple is the duty of seeing
that they are prepared to do these things well!
The task of the city school is complex because of the vast number of
businesses, professions, industrial occupations and trades which
children enter. In comparison the country school has the plainest of
plain sailing. What are the ingredients of successful farmers and
farmers' wives? What proportion of physical education, of mental
training, of technical instruction in agriculture, of suggestions for
practical farm work, of dressmaking, sewing and cooking, enter into the
making of farmers' boys and farmers' girls who will live up to the
traditions of the American farm? To what extent must the school be a
center for social activity and social enthusiasm? How shall the school
make the farm and the small country town better living places for the
men and women of to-morrow?
The duty of the country school is simple and clear. It must fit country
children for country life. First it must know what are the needs of the
country; then, manned by teachers whose training has prepared them to
appreciate country problems, it will become the power that a country
school ought to be in directing the thoughts and lives of the
community.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 22: An extensive reference to this school will be found
in "Country Life and the Country School," Mabel Carney, Row,
Peterson & Company, Chicago, 1912.]
[Footnote 23: Supra, pp. 180-181.]