area, and beautiful in outlook and decoration. Here will be the
neighborhood athletic grounds for both boys and girls, shade trees for
picnics, flowers and shrubs, and ground enough for a school garden
connected with the instruction in agriculture. Nor is it too much to
believe that the district will in the future erect on the school grounds
a cottage for the principal of the school and his family, and thus offer
an additional inducement for strong, able men to devote their energies
to education in the rural communities.
Now contrast this schoolhouse and equipment with the typical rural
building of the present. Adjoining a prosperous farm, with its large
house, its accompanying barns, silos, machine houses, and all the
equipment necessary to modern farming, is the little schoolhouse. It is
a dilapidated shell of a rectangular box, barren of every vestige of
beauty or attractiveness both inside and out. At the rear are two
outbuildings which are an offense to decency and a menace to morals.
Within the schoolhouse the painted walls are dingy with smoke and grime.
The windows are broken and dirty, no pictures adorn the walls. The floor
is washed but once or twice a year. The room is heated by an ugly box of
a stove, and ventilated only by means of windows which frequently are
nailed shut. The grounds present a wilderness of weeds, rubbish, and
piles of ashes. It is all an outrage against the rights of the country
child, and an indictment of the intelligence and ideals of a large
proportion of our people.
If it is said that the plan proposed to remedy this situation is
revolutionary, it will be admitted. What our rural schools of to-day
need is _not improvement but reorganization_. For only in this radical
way can they be made a factor in the vitalizing and conserving of the
rural community which, unless some new leaven is introduced, is surely
destined to disorganization and decay.
_The consolidation of rural schools_
The first step in reorganizing the rural schools is _consolidation_. Our
rural school organization, buildings, and equipment are a full century
behind our industrial and social advancement. The present plan of
attempting to run a school on approximately every four square miles of
territory originated at a time of poverty, and when the manufacturing
industries were all carried on in the homes and small shops. Our rural
people are now well-to-do, and manufacturing has moved over into a
well-organized set of factories; but the isolated little school,
shamefully housed, meagerly equipped, poorly attended, and unskillfully
taught, still remains.
Such a system of schools leaves our rural people educationally on a par
with the days of cradling the grain and threshing it with a flail; of
planting corn by hand and cultivating it with a hoe; of lighting the
house with a tallow dip, and traveling by stage-coach.
The well-meant attempts to "improve" the rural school as now organized
are futile. The proposal to solve the problem by raising the standards
for teachers, desirable as this is; by the raising of salaries; or by
bettering the type of the little schoolhouse, are at best but temporary
makeshifts, and do not touch the root of the problem. The first and most
fundamental step is to eliminate the little shacks of houses that dot
our prairies every two miles along the country roads.
For not only is it impossible to supply adequate buildings so near
together, but it is even more impossible to find children enough to
constitute a real school in such small districts. There is no way of
securing a full head of interest and enthusiasm with from five to ten or
twelve pupils in a school. The classes are too small and the number of
children too limited to permit the organization of proper games and
plays, or a reasonable variety of association through mingling together.
Furthermore, it will never be possible to pay adequate salaries to the
teachers in these small schools. Nor will any ambitious and
well-prepared teacher be willing to remain in such a position, where he
is obliged to invest his time and influence with so few pupils, and
where all conditions are so adverse.
The chief barrier to the centralization of rural education has been
local prejudice and pride. In many cases a true sentimental value has
attached to "the little red schoolhouse." Its praises have been sung,
and orator and writer have expanded upon the glories of our common
schools, until it is no wonder that their pitiful inadequacy has been
overlooked by many of their patrons.
In other cases opposition has arisen to giving up the small local
school because of the selfish fear that the loss of the school would
lower the value of adjacent property. Still others have feared that
consolidation would mean higher school taxes, and have opposed it upon
this ground.
But whatever the causes of the opposition to consolidation, this
opposition must cease before the rural school can fulfill its function
and before the rural child can have educational opportunities even
approximating those given the town child. And until this is
accomplished, the exodus from the farm will continue and ought to
continue. Pride, prejudice, and penury must not be allowed to deprive
the farm boys and girls of their right to education and normal
development.
The movement toward consolidation of rural schools and transportation of
the children to a central school has already attained considerable
headway in many regions of the country.[1] It is now a part of the rural
school system in thirty-two States. Massachusetts, the leader in
consolidation, began in 1869. The movement at first grew slowly in all
the States, not only having local opposition to overcome, but also
meeting the problem of bad country roads interfering with the
transportation of pupils.
During the past half-dozen years, however, consolidation has been
gaining headway, and is now going on at least five times as fast as the
average for the twenty-five years preceding 1906. Indiana is at present
the banner State in the rapidity of consolidation, the expenditure for
conveyance having considerably more than trebled since 1904. The broad
and general sweep of the movement, together with the fact that it is
practically unheard of for schools that have once tried consolidation to
go back to the old system, seems to indicate that the rural education of
the not distant future will, except in a few regions, be carried on in
consolidated schools.
The relative cost of maintaining district and consolidated schools is an
important factor. Yet this factor must not be given undue prominence. It
is true that the cost of education must be kept at a reasonable ratio
with the standard of living of a community. But it is also true that the
consolidated rural school must be looked upon as an indispensable
country-life institution, and hence as having claim to a more generous
basis of support than that accorded the district school.
While it is impossible, owing to such widely varying conditions, to
make an absolutely exact statement of the relative expense of the two
types of schools, yet it has been shown in many different instances that
the cost of schooling per day in consolidated schools is but slightly,
if any, above that in most district schools.
The aggregate annual cost is usually somewhat higher in the consolidated
schools, owing to the fact of a greatly increased attendance. A
comparison made between the cost per day's schooling in the smaller
district schools and consolidated schools almost invariably shows a
lower expenditure for the latter. For example, the fifteen districts in
Hardin County, Iowa, having in 1908 an enrollment of nine or less,
averaged a cost of 27.5 cents a day for each pupil.[2] At the same time
the cost per day in the consolidated rural schools of northeastern Ohio
was only 17.4 cents a day, the district schools being more than
fifty-seven per cent higher than the consolidated. Similar comparisons
show the same trend in many other localities. In a great many of the
small district schools the cost per pupil is as high as in consolidated
schools where a high school course is also provided. It has been found
that the average cost per year of schooling a child in a consolidated
school is but little above thirty dollars, while in practically all
smaller district schools it far exceeds this amount, not infrequently
going above fifty dollars. This means that average rural districts that
are putting at least thirty dollars a year into the schooling of each
child can, by consolidating their schools, secure greatly improved
educational facilities with no heavier financial burden.
Not the least important of the advantages growing out of rural school
consolidation is the improved attendance. Experience has shown that
fully twenty-five per cent more children of school age are enrolled
under the consolidated than under the district system. The advantage of
this one factor alone can hardly be over-estimated, but the increase in
regularity of attendance is also as great. The average daily attendance
of rural schools throughout the country is approximately sixty per cent
of the enrollment, and in entire States falls below fifty per cent. It
has been found that consolidation, with its attendant conveyance of
pupils, commonly increases the average daily attendance by as much as
twenty-five per cent.
It is true that in many regions it may at present prove impossible to
consolidate all the rural schools. In places where the population is so
sparse as to require transportation for very long distances, or where
the country roads are still in such a condition in wet seasons as to be
practically impassable, consolidation must of necessity be delayed. In
such communities, however, the rural school need not be completely at a
standstill. Much can be done to make even the one-room schoolhouse
attractive and hygienic. With almost no expense, the grounds can be set
with shade trees, shrubs, and perennial flowering plants. The yard can
be made into a lawn in front, and into an athletic ground at the sides
or the rear. Enough ground can be added to provide for all these things,
and a school garden besides. The building can be rendered more inviting
through better architecture, and more attention to decoration and
cleanliness. An adequate supply of books and other equipment can be
provided. While the isolated rural school can never take the place of
the consolidated school, while it should always be looked upon as only
temporarily occupying a place later to be filled by a more efficient
type of school, it can after all be rendered much more efficient than it
is at present. And since the one-room school will without doubt for
years to come be required as a supplement of the consolidated school,
it should receive the same careful thought and effort toward its
improvement that is being accorded the school of better type.
_Financial support of the rural school_
The rural school has never had adequate financial support. There has
been good reason for this in many regions of the country where farm
property was low in value, the land sparsely settled and not all
improved, or else covered by heavy mortgages. As these conditions have
gradually disappeared and the agricultural population become more
prosperous, the school has in some degree shared the general prosperity.
But not fully. A smaller proportion of the margin of wealth above living
necessities is going into rural education now than in the earlier days
of less prosperity. While the farmer has vastly "improved" his farm, he
has improved his school but little. While he has been adding modern
machinery and adopting scientific methods in caring for his grain and
stock, his children have not had the advantage of an increasingly
efficient school.
The poverty of the rural school finds its explanation in two facts: (1)
the relatively low value of the taxable property of the rural as
compared with the town or city district, and (2) the lower rate of local
school tax paid in country than in urban districts. The first of these
disadvantages of the rural district cannot be remedied; but for the
second, there seems to be no valid economic reason.
The approximate difference in the local school-tax rate paid in urban
and rural districts is shown in the following instances, which might be
duplicated from other States:--
In Kansas, the local school tax paid in 1910 by towns and cities was
above eighty per cent more than that paid by country districts. In
Missouri, the current report of the State Superintendent shows towns and
cities seventy-five per cent higher than the country. In Minnesota,
towns and cities average nearly three times the rate paid by rural
districts. In Ohio, towns and cities are more than ten per cent higher
than rural districts, even where the rural district maintains a full
elementary and high school course. In Nebraska and Iowa, the town and
city rate is about double that of country districts.
When there is added to this difference the further fact that town and
city property is commonly assessed at more nearly its full value than
rural property, the discrepancy becomes all the greater.
It is not meant, of course, that farmers should pay as high a school-tax
rate for the elementary rural school as that paid by town patrons who
also have a high school available. But, on the other hand, if better
school facilities are to be furnished the country children, rural
property should bear its full share of the taxes required. The farmer
should be willing to pay as much for the education of his child as the
city dweller pays for a similar education for his.
During the last generation farmers have been increasing in wealth faster
than any other class of industrial workers. Their land has doubled in
value, barns have been built, machinery has been added, automobiles
purchased, and large bank credits established. Yet very little of this
increased prosperity has reached the school. Library, reference works,
maps, charts, and other apparatus are usually lacking. In Iowa, as a
fair example, a sum of not less than ten nor more than fifteen cents a
year for each pupil of school age in the district is required by law to
be expended for library books. Yet in not a few districts the law is a
dead letter or the money grudgingly spent! In many rural schools the
teacher has to depend on the proceeds of a "social," an "exhibition,"
or a "box party" to secure a few dollars for books or pictures for the
neighborhood school, and sometimes even buys brooms and dust pans from
the fund secured in this way.
This is all wrong. The school should be put on a business basis. It
should have the necessary tools with which to accomplish its work, and
not be forced to waste the time and opportunity of childhood for want of
a few dollars expended for equipment. Its patrons should realize that
just as it pays to supply factory, shop, or farm with the best of
instruments for carrying on the work, so it pays in the school. Cheap
economy is always wasteful, and never more wasteful than when it
cripples the efficiency of education.
State aid for rural schools has been proposed and in some instances
tried, as a mode of solving their financial problem. Where this system
has been given a fair trial, as for example in Minnesota, it has
resulted in two great advantages: (1) it has encouraged the local
community to freer expenditure of their own money for school purposes,
since the contribution of the State is conditioned on the amount
expended by the district. This is an important achievement, since it
serves to train the community to the idea of more liberal local
taxation for school purposes, and it is probable that the greater part
of the support of our schools will continue to come from this source.
Another advantage of state aid is (2) that it serves to equalize
educational opportunities, and hence to maintain a true educational
democracy. Wealthier localities are caused to contribute to the
educational facilities of those less favored, and a common advancement
thereby secured.
While the theory of state aid to rural education is wholly defensible,
and while it has worked well in practice, yet there is one safeguard
that needs to be considered. It is manifestly unfair to ask the people
of towns and cities to help pay for the support of the rural schools
through the medium of the State treasury except on condition that the
patrons of the rural schools themselves do their fair share. Mr. "A,"
living in a town where he pays twenty mills school tax, ought not to be
asked to help improve Mr. "B's" rural school, while Mr. "B" is himself
paying but ten mills of school tax. The farmer is as able as any one
else to pay a fair rate of taxation for his school, and should be
willing to do so before asking for aid from other taxation sources.
Rural education must not be placed on the basis of a missionary
enterprise. State aid should be used to compensate for the difference
in the economic _basis_ for taxation in different localities, and not
for a difference in the _rates_ of taxation between localities equally
able to pay the same rate.
* * * * *
We may conclude, then, that while neither the rural school nor the
community has been fully aware of the possibilities for mutual
helpfulness and coöperation, yet there are many hopeful signs that both
are awakening to a sense of responsibility. Federal and state
commissions have been created to study the rural problem, national and
state teachers' associations are seeking a solution of the rural school
question, and, better still, the patrons of the rural schools are in
many places alive to the pressing need for better educational facilities
for their children.
Growing out of these influences and the faithful work of many state and
county superintendents, and not a few of the rural teachers themselves,
a spirit of progress is gaining headway. Several thousand consolidated
schools are now rendering excellent service to their patrons and at the
same time acting as a stimulus to other communities to follow their
example. State aid to rural education is no longer an experiment. The
people are in many localities voluntarily and gladly increasing their
taxes in order that they may improve their schools. Teachers' salaries
are being increased, better equipment provided, and buildings rendered
more habitable.
The great educational problem of the immediate future will be to
encourage and guide the movement which is now getting under way. For
mistakes made now will handicap both community and school for years to
come. The attempt to secure better schools by "improving" conditions in
local districts should be definitely abandoned except in localities
where conditions make consolidation impracticable for the present. The
new consolidated school building should take definitely into account the
fact that the school is to become the _neighborhood social center_, and
the structure should be planned as much with this function in view as
with its uses for school purposes. The new type of rural school is not
to aim simply to give a better intellectual training, but is at the same
time to relate this training to the conditions and needs of our
agricultural population. And all who have to do with the rural schools
in any way are to seek to make the school a true vitalizing factor in
the community--a leaven, whose influence shall permeate every line of
interest and activity of its patrons and lead to a fuller and richer
life.
_The rural school and its pupils_
One of the surest tests of any school is the attitude of the pupils--the
spirit of loyalty, coöperation, and devotion they manifest with
reference to their education. Do they, on the whole, look upon the
school as an opportunity or an imposition? Do they consider it _their_
school, and make its interests and welfare their concern, or do they
think of it as the teacher's school, or the board's school or the
district's school? These questions are of supreme importance, for the
question of attitude, quite as much as that of ability, determines the
use made of opportunity.
It must be admitted that throughout our entire school system there
remains something to be desired in the spirit of coöperation between
pupils and schools. The feeling of loyalty which the child has for his
home does not extend commensurately to the school. Too often the school
is looked upon as something forced upon the child, for his welfare,
perhaps, but after all not as forming an interesting and vital part of
his present experience. It is often rather a place where so much time
and effort and inconvenience must be paid for so many grades and
promotions, and where, incidentally, preparation is supposed to be made
for some future demands very dimly conceived. At best, there is
frequently a lack of feeling of full identity of interests between the
child and the school.
The youth, immaturity, and blindness of childhood make it impossible, of
course, for children to conceive of their school in a spirit of full
appreciation. On the other hand, the very nature of childhood is
responsiveness and readiness of coöperation in any form of interesting
activity,--is loyalty of attitude toward what is felt to minister to
personal happiness and well-being. In so far, therefore, as there exists
any lack of loyalty and coöperation of pupils toward their school, the
reasons for such defection are to be sought first of all in the school,
and not in the child.
While this negative attitude of the pupils exists in some degree in all
our schools, it is undoubtedly more marked in our rural schools than in
others. In a negligible number of cases does this lack of coöperation
take the form of overt rebellion against the authority of the school. It
is manifested in other ways, many of them wholly unconscious to the
child, as, for example, lack of desire to attend school, and
indifference to its activities when present.
Attending school is the most important occupation that can engage the
child. Yet the indifference of children and their parents alike to the
necessity for schooling makes the small and irregular attendance of
rural school pupils one of the most serious problems with which
educators have to deal. County superintendents have in many places
offered prizes and diplomas with the hope of bettering attendance, but
such incentives do not reach the source of the difficulty. The remedy
must finally lie in a fundamental change of attitude toward the school
and its opportunities. Good attendance must spring from interest in the
school work and a feeling of its value, rather than from any artificial
incentives.
How great a problem poor attendance at rural schools is, may be realized
from the fact that, in spite of compulsory education laws, not more than
seventy per cent of the children accessible to the rural school are
enrolled, and of this number only about sixty per cent are in daily
attendance. This is to say that under one half of our farm children are
daily receiving the advantages of even the rural school. In some States
this proportion will fall as low as three tenths instead of one half.
In many rich agricultural counties of the Middle West, having a farming
population of approximately ten thousand, not more than forty or fifty
pupils per year complete the eight grades of the rural school.
If the rural school is to be able to claim the regular attendance and
spontaneous coöperation of the children it must (1) be reasonably
accessible to them, (2) be attractive and interesting in itself, and (3)
offer work the value and application of which are evident.
The inaccessibility of the rural school has always been one of its
greatest disadvantages. In a large proportion of cases, a walk of from a
mile to a mile and a half along country roads or across cultivated
fields has been required to reach the schoolhouse. During inclement
weather, or when deep snow covers the ground, this distance proves
almost prohibitive for all the smaller children. Wet feet and drenched
clothing have been followed by severe colds, coughs, bronchitis, or
worse, and the children have not only suffered educationally, but been
endangered physically as well.