THE COMMUNITY'S EDUCATION
THE SCHOOL
At its beginning the United States Government gave support to education
by the allotment of public lands to the states as an endowment for
public schools, and although the federal government has done but little
since then for primary education, the support of education has become
one of the chief concerns of state and local governments. In colonial
times public schools were largely confined to New England. With the
settlement of the Middle West district schools were established with the
aid of the government land grants. But in the South conditions were not
favorable for public schools until long after the Civil War, and only in
the last generation or two has public education become firmly
established.
The district school, the famous "little red school-house" of the
nineteenth century, was frequently the neighborhood center and the
school district commonly formed a neighborhood area, particularly in
hilly sections where its lines were adjusted by topography. A recent
study of neighborhood areas in Otsego County, New York, shows that about
half of them are identical with the school districts, chiefly on account
of topography, while in Dane County, Wisconsin, more neighborhood areas
are determined primarily by the school district than by any one
factor.[40] Formerly the district school-house was quite frequently
used for Sunday school or preaching services; spelling-bees and other
entertainments were held from time to time; and political meetings and
elections were commonly held there.
Although the district school is still a neighborhood social center in
many sections, its decadence commenced at the close of the nineteenth
century, the change depending upon the general progress or isolation of
the community, particularly as affected by transportation. Several
factors have combined to make the district school unsatisfactory to the
rural community of to-day. In the older parts of the country the
population has so decreased that in many districts the maintenance of a
school has become exceedingly expensive, it is difficult to secure
competent teachers, and there are too few pupils to make the school
attractive. The better educational advantages of town and city schools
have caused much dissatisfaction upon the part of the better class of
farmers who wish their children to have the best possible start in life,
and many of those who can afford to do so have "moved to town" to
educate their children, thus making a bad matter worse for the district
school. As long as roads were poor the district school was the only one
possible, but with better roads, automobiles and trolleys, the
consolidation of schools has proceeded rapidly in the past decade,
particularly in the prairie states.
A modern school cannot be maintained at every other crossroads. Improved
roads naturally radiate from the village center and hence it is the
logical point for a consolidated school or high school. There are
localities in isolated regions where it might be desirable to establish
consolidated schools in the open country, but in most cases where there
is a natural village center, the school should be located there and the
school laws should make possible the organization of the consolidated
school district regardless of township or county lines. Indeed
legislation has already been enacted to this end in several states and
forms one of the most important movements for strengthening the rural
community. Here and there are to be found consolidated schools which
have been placed in the open country at the center of a township because
it was the point most easily agreed upon by all the patrons,
particularly where the township is an administrative unit of the school
system. In some cases somewhat successful efforts are being made to have
such consolidated schools serve as social centers, but it is believed
that in the long run community life will flow to its natural centers and
that the seeming success of such social centers in the open country,
unless the neighborhood be an isolated one, will tend to weaken the
communities concerned. Usually a consolidated district of this sort will
contain parts of two or three community areas and the location of the
school at a point between them weakens the support of the community
centers to that extent. Here we encounter one of the many ways in which
our artificial unit of rural government--the township--interferes with
community progress.[41]
Formerly only the children of the upper classes who were preparing for
college received a secondary education, but during the past generation
there has been a rapid growth of public high schools which serve as the
"people's colleges." At first these were found only in the cities and
larger towns, but rural communities have demanded equal advantages and
state and national legislation has aided them in the cost of
maintenance. Federal aid for secondary education in vocational subjects,
now available through the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917, has encouraged the
establishment of rural high schools and has greatly increased the number
giving instruction in agriculture and home economics. Hundreds of rural
high schools are now giving agricultural courses better than the
agricultural colleges gave twenty-five years ago.
Rural high schools with full four-year courses have been found mostly in
the larger villages and towns, but the movement is now well under way to
divide the period of secondary education into a junior and senior high
school (the so-called "six-six" plan), and junior high schools,
including the seventh to ninth grades, are being established in many
smaller communities by simply adding a grade to the consolidated
schools. The educational forces of the country, as expressed by
statements of the U. S. Bureau of Education and the National Education
Association, are now committed to the policy of consolidated rural
schools wherever they are practicable and to the establishment of a
sufficient number of high schools so that every rural child may attend
high school and still be able to live at home. Obviously it is important
from the standpoint of community development that the high schools
should be placed at community centers and that where some of the
communities are too small to support senior high schools that they
should be located at a village which serves as a center of what, for
want of a better term, we may call "the larger community" (see pages
232-3).
One of the reasons for consolidated schools is that the objectives of
rural education are changing and that country people are demanding that
their children be educated for country as well as for town life.
Formerly the content and method of rural education was an imitation of
that of the city and inevitably made industrial, commercial, and
professional occupations the ideal of the pupil. The schools of New
England have done an immense service to the rest of the country but they
were an important factor in depopulating many a New England town. The
introduction of nature study, agriculture, and home economics is
becoming general in rural schools. Educators do not desire to train
rural children solely for farm life, and thus to segregate a farm class,
even were that possible, but they are attempting to give equal emphasis
to the values of country life so that it may prove equally attractive to
the best as well as to the less efficient rural youth.
Furthermore the whole attitude of rural as well as urban education is
changing from that of teaching individuals so as to equip them with
intellectual tools for their personal advancement, to one of training
future citizens who will attain their own best interests by useful
service to the community. The curriculum and objectives of the school
are rapidly becoming socialized, and as this process goes on the school
will more and more become the most important single institution for
creating community loyalty.
The community school, particularly the high school, no longer confines
itself to the instruction of its regular pupils; it is the educational
center and headquarters of the community. With the assistance of the
Extension Service of the agricultural colleges, rural high schools are
holding one-week extension schools for farm men and women, and under the
Smith-Hughes Act they are offering continuation short courses for the
younger farmers. The progressive rural high school is taking a live
interest in the one-room district schools which may be too far from the
center for consolidation, and is seeking to interest their pupils in
attending high schools through athletic meets, play festivals, and
similar assemblages of all the schools of the community, which thus
create a natural bond of interest and common enthusiasm. The principal
of the high school at Oxford, N. Y., recently organized a
public-speaking contest of representatives of all the country schools in
his supervisory district, in connection with the annual play festival
which he had established several years before. This proved to be a huge
success and gave the boys and girls from the district schools new
confidence in their ability of self-expression. One of the greatest
needs which farmers' organizations are to-day feeling is their lack of
leaders who can speak for them effectively at public gatherings and
before legislative hearings in competition with men who make their
living by talking. Such contests, particularly when the topics discussed
deal with affairs of country life with which the children are acquainted
and in which they are vitally interested, as was the case with the one
at Oxford and to which much of its success was attributed, are therefore
of great value and may well be substituted for the academic debates so
often heard on subjects quite foreign to the child's life and beyond his
real comprehension.
In many places new school buildings are being constructed with an
auditorium, which may be used as a gymnasium, library room, dining room,
etc., so that they may serve as social centers for the community. Where
the community is not large enough to afford a separate community house
this is frequently the best and most economical means of meeting this
need. This will be discussed further in considering community buildings.
Numerous rural high schools are conducting lyceum and entertainment
courses, and some are operating motion-picture shows on Saturday nights.
Where no other organization is better adapted for taking the
responsibility of furnishing high-class entertainment to the community,
this is a useful service. School orchestras and bands, choruses, and
dramatic clubs are also valuable additions to the community life.
The successful community school will not center all of its activities in
its own building, but it will take some of its talent to the country
schools for local athletic and play contests, dramatic or musical
entertainments, etc., and thus magnify the importance of the local
school in the neighborhood, for only by acquiring a desire for these
advantages will the people in the more isolated parts of the community
come to interest themselves in the activities of the whole community at
its village center.
It is becoming more and more apparent that if the school is really to
function as it should, that it must have the active interest and support
of its patrons. It is not enough that they should assemble at the annual
school meeting, elect school officials, vote taxes for its maintenance,
and then leave its management to the school board and teachers. It is
highly desirable that every encouragement should be given toward making
teaching a life profession, but as teaching becomes professionalized it
tends, like every other calling, to become more or less of a
bureaucracy. It is essential that educational methods should be
determined by and be in charge of educators who are trained for such
service, but if they get the idea, as sometimes seems unfortunately the
case, that it is the business of the people to supply funds for the
support of the schools and then to leave their entire operation to the
teachers and superintendents, they assume an attitude which is fatal to
the life of the school, for no educational system, however ideal in
theory, can be effective without the sympathetic understanding and
cordial support of the majority of its patrons. It is for this reason
that large emphasis is being placed by progressive educators on the
organization of parent-teachers associations or school improvement
leagues for the discussion of school problems by parents and teachers.
In many cases the parent-teachers association forms one of the chief
bonds of the country community and the State of Virginia has built up a
remarkable system of community organization through its Cooperative
Educational League with hundreds of local leagues which interest
themselves in all phases of community life.
The school is also coming to realize that although it is the institution
specially created for the systematic education of the child, that much
of his education is received outside the school and that certain phases
of his education may be accomplished more effectively through the
cooperation of the school with other institutions and agencies. Thus
instead of seeking to absorb all of the time of the child and to give it
all kinds of training within the school or as part of its curriculum,
the school is commencing to develop methods for strengthening and
coordinating the educational work of the home, the church, and of
various organizations.
The teaching of agriculture has been made vital and effective by the
home project in which the boy comes to appreciate the value of the
principles studied at school in connection with an agricultural
enterprise in raising crops or livestock of his own on the home farm.
This tends to enlist the interest of the parents, who contribute largely
to the educational process. The same principle is being applied to a
less extent in work in home economics, and the giving of school credit
for various kinds of home work has established a community of interest
between home and school. In the teaching of hygiene, and particularly
with regard to sex hygiene, the school finds it difficult to establish
those habits and attitudes which are as important as mere knowledge
without the help and cooperation of the home. So, too, the medical
inspection of school children, with the work of school nurses and
clinics held at the school for children of pre-school age, stimulate the
home to better health.
Because of the separation of church and state in this country we have
very largely neglected all effort toward religious education in our
public schools, and even ethical training has been more or less of a
secondary objective until very recently. A growing appreciation of the
inadequacy of the ordinary Sunday school has led to a movement for
giving systematic instruction and training in religious education under
church auspices at a time set apart by the school and for which school
credit is given when it meets reasonable educational standards. The
week-day school of religion is still in an experimental stage. It has
been established longest in cities, but is now being attempted in rural
communities, and if sectarian dogmatism and jealousies can be submerged,
there seems every reason to hope that this may be a most important
feature of our educational system.
So, too, the boys' and girls' clubs in agriculture and home economics,
the boy and girl scouts, the campfires, the little mothers' leagues, the
health crusades, the Y.M.C.A and Y.W.C.A., and other organizations for
children and youth, have created new interest in certain aspects of
school work and are a source of educational dynamic which progressive
educators are utilizing as valuable allies.
Thus in very many ways the school is adapting its methods to meet its
responsibility for developing good citizens who are loyal to the welfare
of the community, and the school principal is rightly expected to be a
leader in community affairs in so far as they concern the participation
and interests of the school.
It is a far cry from the isolated one-room, box-type district school,
with a young girl with no professional training teaching a dozen
youngsters of all ages as best she can with little or no equipment, to
the modern consolidated school or rural high school with all the
intimate connections with the life of the whole community above
described, but this difference measures one phase of the progress which
has been made in recent years toward the integration of the rural
community and depicts one of the most important forces involved in this
process, whose influence is only commencing to be felt. How different
will the life of rural communities be a generation or two hence when in
most of them practically all of the parents and children will have had a
high-school education, with all the broader contacts and outlook on life
which that involves! We need only to study the influence of the Danish
Folk High Schools[42] to visualize the outcome.
THE PUBLIC LIBRARY
The public library has possibilities as an educational institution
exceeded only by those of the school. In many cases it is the
intellectual center of the community, while in others the caricature of
the library of Gopher Prairie in Sinclair Lewis' "Main Street," where
one of the chief objects was to keep the books from being soiled or worn
out, is not much overdrawn. Increasingly, however, the librarian is
studying methods of salesmanship for increasing the local consumption of
the products of the world's best minds in books and magazines, and is of
inestimable service to all organizations whose members have occasion to
study what human thought has contributed to the solution of their
problems. The public library gives the means of further education to
many a person deprived of academic privileges, who may realize the truth
of Carlyle's saying: "The true University of these days is a Collection
of Books."
In many states public libraries are aided by state and local
appropriations, particularly in New England and the states settled by
New England stock, for it is to New England[43] that we are indebted for
the public library as well as the public school. It is not, however,
economically possible for every small community to support a permanent
local library, and many of those established have a precarious existence
and are maintained only through the devotion of public-spirited
individuals. To meet the need of isolated neighborhoods a few county
libraries, notably in Washington County, Maryland, and a few counties in
Delaware and Minnesota, have made use of book-wagons which are
accompanied by a librarian who makes a "rural free delivery" of books to
each home and assists the families in their selection. It seems,
however, that the chief value of the book-wagon is as a means of
creating a desire for books, and that when this is created it will be
much more economical to furnish them through branch stations at
neighborhood or community centers. Systems of traveling libraries are
also supported by many states and make it possible for the most isolated
neighborhoods to secure the best of books. Unfortunately, however, the
places which need them most do not always know of them nor will they
take the initiative to secure them. They are of particular value for
securing collections of books on special topics for the use of granges,
churches, and study clubs of all sorts. But as the demand for traveling
libraries grows, the administration of the system from the state library
becomes a large undertaking and the need of better local libraries is
realized.
A system of "county libraries" has been developed in California, has
spread to several other states, and is now being advocated by the
American Library Association and by library leaders generally. Under the
county system a central library is established at the county seat, with
branches or loan stations at the different community centers, and with
traveling collections for the more isolated neighborhoods. The larger
centers which have local libraries continue to maintain them and simply
serve as part of the system. Thus the library resources of the county
are pooled and the farm people are given the same sort of service that a
city library gives its people through its branches. The feature of
interest from a community standpoint is that, although this is a county
system, it recognizes the usefulness of local branches and makes
possible a library service adapted to its needs for every small
community, whereas separate libraries have heretofore been possible only
in the larger centers.
THE COUNTRY WEEKLY
One of the most important educational agencies of the rural community is
the oft-derided weekly newspaper. After a period of difficult
competition with city dailies the surviving weeklies are becoming
recognized as community institutions. Those which are succeeding are
doing so by becoming the voice of the community and the means of its
self-acquaintance. No agency may be more powerful in unifying or
disrupting the life of the local community. This new concept of the
country weekly has been well expressed by W. P. Kirkwood, of the
University of Minnesota:
"Community building was a concept unknown to the editor of
thirty or forty years ago. To-day it is an accepted concept
of dynamic force, full of significance in most of the
country towns of America.
"Community service, as such a concept, is fast finding its
way into the country press--in the Middle West, at least. As
this ideal gains acceptance, giving definite direction to
newspaper effort for the upbuilding of communities, the
press gains an enlarged constituency with a truer conception
of the power and usefulness of the newspaper....
"Community service, community building, then, as a master
motive, establishes the country weekly newspaper publisher
securely in his position of leadership. It assures added
community prosperity and the local development of the finer
satisfactions of life in which he must share, and no other
agency can take this from him, neither the city daily,
coming in from a distance and concerned with the larger
affairs of the larger community, nor the school, nor the
church, nor any other."[44]
In a bulletin on "The Country Weekly in New York State,"[45] Professor
M. V. Atwood, of the New York State College of Agriculture and for
several years a successful publisher, discusses the purposes and future
of the country weekly. He holds that the country weekly is not, as often
stated, and should not be a molder of public opinion, but should rather
express and interpret the sentiment of its constituency.
"The country newspaper," he says, "is a service agency; it
is a community institution like the church, the school, the
library, and the farm and home bureau. It helps all these
institutions to do their work....
"If the country newspaper does not do much thought-molding
it does offer a medium for the dissemination of thought, for
the propagation of ideas of the people of the community. The
value of the newspaper to the community becomes especially
apparent when some local project is to be considered, like
the erection of a school, the building of good roads, or the
installation of a water system. For weeks the paper will
offer in the form of letters, the views of different people
of the community. The subject is thoroughly aired. Even if
the editor takes no sides in the matter, his paper has been
of inestimable service to the community."
Indeed, as we shall see later, such a free discussion is a most
essential step in all community activities, and the service of the
newspaper is probably greater if it acts as a free and open forum for
discussion rather than a partisan of either side. Of the news of the
future, Professor Atwood says:
"Most of these papers will also be printing much more farm
news than they do to-day because as the publishers have
surveyed their fields they will have found the primary
interest of their readers is agricultural. There will be
some exceptions for some communities will have ceased to be
dominated by agriculture because of the coming of factories.
The real country weeklies will not become agricultural text
hooks; but the news of the farms, the improvements to farm
buildings, and the experiences of successful local farmers
will find much space in their columns.
"The community editor of the future is not going to worry
much about 'hot' news. He will realize that most of the
striking facts of any story have already been printed in the
neighboring city papers, but he will realize also that the
genuine community interest in the event has not been
glimpsed by the city editor, who is out of touch with the
local situation; around these community aspects the local
editor will weave his story."
Possibly the best appreciation of the country weekly is a prose poem
written by Professor Bristow Adams, editor of the New York State College
of Agriculture, and presented at the first country newspaper conference
held at that institution during Farmers Week 1920, entitled "I am the
Country Weekly,"[46] and which vividly depicts its service as an agency
for developing community consciousness:
"I am the Country Weekly.
"I am the friend of the family, the bringer of tidings from
other friends; I speak to the home in the evening light of
summers vine-clad porch or the glow of winters lamp.
"I help to make this evening hour; I record the great and
the small, the varied acts of the days and weeks that go to
make up life.
"I am for and of the home; I follow those who leave humble
beginnings; whether they go to greatness or to the gutter, I
take to them the thrill of old days, with wholesome
messages.
"I speak the language of the common man; my words are fitted
to his understanding. My congregation is larger than that of
any church in my town; my readers are more than those in the
school. Young and old alike find in me stimulation,
instruction, entertainment, inspiration, solace, comfort. I
am the chronicler of birth, and love and death--the three
great facts of man's existence.
"I bring together buyer and seller, to the benefit of both;
I am part of the market-place of the world. Into the home I
carry word of the goods which feed and clothe, and shelter,
and which minister to comfort, ease, health, and happiness.
"I am the word of the week, the history of the year, the
record of my community in the archives of state and nation.
"I am the exponent of the lives of my readers.
"I am the Country Weekly."
FOOTNOTES:
[40] Out of 185 neighborhood areas, 39 were chiefly due to the school
district, the next most important influence being the church parish
which determined the neighborhood in 33 cases. J. H. Kolb, "Rural
Primary Groups." Research Bull. 51, Agr. Exp. Sta. of the Univ. of
Wisconsin, p. 48.
[41] The relation of the consolidated school to township and community
lines is well shown in a study of the schools of Randolph County,
Indiana, and Marshall County, Iowa, by Dr. A. W. Hayes, in his "Rural
Community Organization" (Chap. VI, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1921). In
Randolph County more of the schools are located in the open country
while the more recent consolidations in Marshall County are located
mostly at the village centers. Dr. Hayes recognizes the differences but
he gives no facts which make possible a judgment as to the relative
efficiency of the two methods from a community standpoint.
[42] F. C. Howe, "Denmark a Cooperative Commonwealth." H. W. Foght,
"Rural Denmark and its Schools."
[43] "In Pease and Niles' 'Gazateer of Connecticut and Rhode Island'
(1819) the social library is almost as regularly mentioned in the
descriptions of the various towns as are the saw-mills, or the ministers
and doctors."--Bidwell, "Rural Economy in New England," p. 347.
[44] In the _Inland Printer_, February, 1920, quoted by Atwood, l. c.,
p. 305.
[45] "The Cornell Reading Course for the Farm," Lesson 155, March, 1920.
See also his "The Country Newspaper and the Community," Chicago, A. C.
McClurg & Co., 1922.
[46] Quoted by Atwood, _l. c._, p. 314.