The county committee of the Orange County, N. Y., Associations is cooperating with the public schools for play on the school grounds.Bullying, fist fights and bad manners have given way to the spirit of courage, endurance, chivalry and helpfulness.
Very slowly people in the country are coming to believe that play is a necessity, not merely a luxury, for children and that it is a law of the child’s growth. But it is not merely a matter of health nor of child life. It is a matter of social welfare and the development of community spirit. It affects every individual, old as well as young.
Consequently we find in the past six years, since the organization of the Playground Association of America at Washington under President Roosevelt’s patronage, great attention has been given to the subject. Country children, whose repertory of games was found to be very limited, have been taught to play a great variety of new and interesting games; and this has given them a new zest in life. Country school athletic contests have been organized and inter-community meets held, sometimes on the county basis. Great field days have been held, rural picnics have been developed which have been marvelously successful in interesting adults as well as children; out-of-door folk-dancing has been revived; play festivals have interested whole townships, with hundreds of visitors, many of whom have tested their strength and skill at the various games and contests. It has not been a commercialized or professional performance by paid experts, but a day of play, of, for, and by the people.
The social effect of these play festivals is far reaching. “Acquaintances formed on these occasions,” says Prof. M. T. Scudder, “may be followed up by profitable correspondence, by exchanging visits, and thus lead to the establishment of life-long friendships. The names of those who excel in one sport or another become household words throughout the county. How this stimulates self-respect and ambition! The real leaders in each community become known, be they boys or girls, men or women, and these may be brought together thereafter for organized efforts in worthy enterprises for the common good. And all the time the isolation of country life is being lessened.”[28]
More and more at these festivals the products of manual training, industrial and domestic arts are being exhibited. There are competitions in bread making, sewing, gardening, carving, basketry, corn and vegetable raising, with every opportunity for varied interest. The dramatic instinct is developed by the revival of pageantry, in connection usually with the Fourth of July or other holidays, often with special local historical significance. “The Pageant of Thetford” is an interesting pamphlet describing a successful program of this order in Vermont. It may be obtained of the Playground Association.
In summarizing the value of such efforts, Dr. Scudder claims, “Perhaps it is not too much to say that through a series of properly conceived and well-conducted festivals the civic and institutional life of an entire country or district, and the lives of manyindividuals of all ages, may be permanently quickened and inspired; the play movement thus making surely for greater contentment, cleaner morals, and more intense patriotism and righteousness on the farm lands and in the village populations of our country. Such indeed are the socializing effects of organized and supervised play.”[29]
The School a Social Center
Under the modern system the centralized school has become sometimes the chief social center of the township. The mere fact of the gathering of numbers gives it initial prestige. Often a fine school spirit is developed by the inter-community contests and teachers of the modern type are not slow to see their opportunity to cooperate with the pupils out of school hours in wholesome games. The school building is often in the winter the meeting place of the young people for social purposes and its central location, its large capacity, its neutral and public character make it often the most desirable social center in the township. This topic will receive fuller treatment in our next chapter on rural education.
The Social Influence of the Grange
The ordinary fraternal orders are seldom found in the rural districts except in villages of some size. They are essentially a town institution, and are of little assistance in the rural situation. But an organization of great influence and social value is the Grange,the Patrons of Husbandry, which is frankly endeavoring to serve the economic, intellectual and social needs of the working farmer and his family.
Founded in 1867, the Grange had a quiet growth for six years, then suddenly developed surprising strength in the panic year of ’73 because of the popularity of its economic program for the relief of farmers, just when their grievances were most pressing. On the crest of this mighty wave of discontent 20,000 local granges were organized within two years; but decline soon followed and by 1880 the movement had utterly collapsed, as suddenly as it had developed. It had disappointed those who had expected too much of it. It could not make good its promises of panacea legislation which would cure all the troubles of the farm; and many of its academic schemes for business cooperation failed ignominiously, after arousing the steadfast faith of thousands.
The order was not dead however. It never declined in New England, and from that quarter has renewed its strength in the East and middle West, so that it is now more prosperous than ever in its history. It has little hold yet in the South or far West; but is easily the most influential farmers’ organization in the country.
The Grange has done a splendid service in thousands of communities by uniting the people of all ages on a broad platform of mutual benefit and community welfare. Often where rival churches tend to divide the neighborhood unpleasantly, the Grange unifies with its broad fellowship and constructive program. Its greatest service has been social, but it has rendered also large educational and economic service and hastaught the people the simple fundamentals of cooperation. Out of the wreck of its earlier experiments, its mutual fire insurance and cooperative purchasing have survived and developed successfully.
Unique among fraternal orders, the Grange has emphasized in a most helpful way the instruction of the people in all matters of popular interest, particularly on subjects relating to farming and the farm home. It has immeasurably broadened the horizons of countless farm women and has thus raised the whole level of rural life in many places. In promoting social fellowship in countless ways it has relieved the bareness of a life of toil and its plans for wholesome recreation have greatly enriched the community life. After years of meager opportunity, country folks are apt to go to social extremes, and the Grange’s greatest danger in some places seems to be to yield to the pleasure-loving spirit rather than to serve all the vital needs of rural people.
II. Business Cooperation.
Modern Rural Cooperative Movements
The rather reckless plunge of the Grange, in its earlier years, into the untried schemes of business cooperation expressed the very general belief of farmers that somehow their common interests demand cooperative enterprise to gain real success. It is a mighty truth. They blundered only in details of method. In an age of trust consolidation, in which manufacturing and commercial interests have attained wonderful developmentand success by merging their resources and their operations under united management, the spirit of cooperation has slowly but inevitably made its way in rural life. But “rampant individualism” dies hard; and most farm communities are still competitive rather than cooperative.
In recent years however there has been a most encouraging increase of cooperation in all important rural interests, which indicates that the old individualism is doomed. In 1907 there were over 85,000 agricultural cooperative societies with a membership of three million different farmers (excluding duplicates); a large proportion of the total farm operators of the country, and doubtless the most progressive of them all. This number included 1,000 cooperative selling agencies; 2,400 cooperative creameries and cheese factories; 1,800 community grain elevators; 4,000 purchasing societies; 15,000 telephone companies on cooperative lines; 15,650 cooperative insurance companies and some 30,000 cooperative irrigation projects.
Not only has this vast development of cooperation served to unite farmers and develop common initiative and community spirit; it has greatly reduced the expense of farm business and the cost of living. Professor Valgren estimates that mutual fire insurance saves the Minnesota farmers annually $750,000. Cooperative telephones save often one-half the cost of the service. Cooperation reduced the price of reapers from $275 to $175; of sewing machines from $75 to $40; of wagons from $150 to $90; and of threshers from $300 to $200. The Pepin County Cooperative Company of Wisconsin did about a quarter of a millionbusiness in the year 1909 in its nine retail stores. A far greater cooperative plan is the Right Relationship League which has a hundred successful stores in Minnesota and Wisconsin, though incorporated but six years ago.
Cooperation Among Fruit Growers
It is safe to say that the great success of fruit growing on the Pacific slope would have been impossible without cooperation. Individual growers were at the mercy of the railroads and the middlemen; but unitedly they have mastered the situation and control the New York market. The fruit is inspected, sorted and packed by the company, not by the individual growers, and thus the standard is maintained and all trickery eliminated. The organization is able to get all possible advantages in the way of low rates for large shipments, to secure ideal accommodations in refrigerated fast freights and storage warehouses; and to keep in touch, by telegraph, with the market conditions in all eastern centers, thus preventing over-supply.
These associations often purchase for their members all supplies needed in the business and keep their laborers busy in the slack seasons making boxes, crates, etc., so that they are able to develop and retain a permanent force of skilled labor instead of depending on the precarious supply of seasonal help. The Grand Junction Fruit Growers’ Union of Colorado bought, in 1906, 224 carloads of supplies for its members, both for business and household use.
For fifteen years past, three-fourths of the citrusgrowers of California have been cooperating successfully and are most efficiently organized. Their central agency markets an annual product worth fifteen millions and keeps representatives in some seventy-five leading markets of America and in London. They command the highest market price for their product and distribute it at a saving of about one-half the expense.
Some Elements of Success and Failure
Cooperation is succeeding well not only among fruit growers, but producers of tobacco, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, celery, and, to a limited extent, cereals. Experience has proved that it pays for farmers of a whole section to specialize on the same product; and the most uniform success has come in societies that are purely cooperative, that is, not joint-stock companies with voting power according to shares, butone vote for each member, the profits being of course proportionate to the relative volume of business each contributes.
Short-sighted selfishness resists this plan and yields slowly to pure cooperation; but experience shows that, as Prof. E. K. Eyerly states, “in the stock companies the large shareholders are tempted constantly to increase the dividend rate on capital at the expense of the other patrons. This may explain in part the difficulty of the cooperative creamery in New England to hold its own, where only 20% are of the purely cooperative type.” Dr. Eyerly includes among the more common causes of failure individualism, conservatism, jealousy, mercenary traits, poor businessmanagement, a lack of knowledge of what other societies are doing, and lack of restrictions on share voting and the number of shares owned.
In the local beginnings of cooperation, ingrained selfishness as well as rural suspicion and ignorance, sometimes blocks progress. When the strong California Fruit Growers’ Exchange began twenty years ago, it had difficulty holding some of its members to their agreements. After pledging their crops to the company they would sometimes yield to the temptations offered by outside buyers, for the sake of greater temporary profit; but after a few lawsuits this tendency to break cooperative contracts was entirely checked.
Our Debt to Immigrants
Unquestionably this great cooperative movement of the last two decades means an entire redirection of rural life and the ultimate conquest of its worst enemy, individualism. We must thank our adopted citizens for the main impulse given to this movement. Cooperative principles and the cooperative spirit have been imported from Denmark, Germany and Italy, where they had already proved successful, and have taken deep root in our middle-western and north-central states, gradually overcoming the native Yankee individualism characteristic of the older settlers. Dr. Eyerly of Amherst is authority for the statement that the only successful cooperative stores organized in New England for a generation past have been, with one or two exceptions, among foreigners.
In connection with the interesting fact thatinterstateimmigration also stimulates cooperation, the same writer says: “In those parts of the country into which there has recently been a considerable influx of interstate immigrants, as in the Pacific coast states, in Texas and certain other parts of the south and southwest, the cooperative movement has rapidly developed. While this is due in part to the intensive and specialized agriculture practiced and to the nature of the crops grown, e. g., fruits and vegetables, it is due also in part to thetransplanting of individuals into new social groupsin which the ‘cake of custom’ is likely to be broken up and new adjustments made under some intellectual leadership.”[30]
The Cooperative Success of Denmark
Sir Horace Plunkett in Ireland, Raiffeisen in Germany and Wollemborg in Italy have led the cooperative movement in their respective countries to remarkable success; but the classic illustration of the wonderful possibilities for rural transformation through cooperation is the story of modern Denmark. Space forbids adequate description here. Suffice it to say that from a condition close to bankruptcy, following a devastating war in 1864, and with sadly depleted fertility, that enterprising little nation of farmers has become the richest in Europe in per capita wealth and about the most productive. An enlightened patriotism working through cooperation accounts for the change.
The Central Cooperative Committee of Denmarkcontrols the situation with consummate skill, with subordinate societies for production of every nature; for the manufacture of rural products such as butter and cheese; for the protection of credit, insurance, health, savings, etc.; even for the protection of the poor farmer against the loss of his single cow! The movement has become closely identified with the religious and patriotic sentiments and in fact springs from both.
It is evident that with this strong movement for cooperation developing in America, two things must eventually follow. The unsocial, narrowly sectarian church must go; and our excessive Anglo-Saxon individualism is doomed,—that unsocial streak in rural life. There is surely a new spirit of cooperation in our country communities east and west which will ultimately overcome our country life deficiencies and make it the most satisfying life in all the world. Meanwhile the struggle is far from won and for men of vision, courage, social initiative and tact there is a great opportunity for leadership in social reconstruction which will challenge and reward the utmost consecration.
Test Questions on Chapter V1.—How do you account for the extreme independence and individualism of the American farmer?2.—In what unsocial ways does this rural individualism express itself?3.—What common weakness do you notice in every sort of rural institution?4.—Why do city people as a rule cooperate more readily than most country people do?5.—Why has it proven a rather difficult task to organize farmers?6.—How do you account for the fact that farmers have less influence in politics than lawyers, though the farmers are seventy times as numerous?7.—In what ways do farmers need to cooperate in their business relations? Illustrate.8.—What shows the failure of country folks to cooperate in religious activities?9.—What old-fashioned forms of recreation are now seldom seen in the country? What has taken their place?10.—Why is a wholesome play spirit so essential to the morals of a community?11.—Suggest different ways to “socialize” a country community.12.—What plans for rural betterment would you include in your community program for the people to work out together?13.—What specific plans would you suggest for organized play and community recreation?14.—What should be done about Sunday baseball in country villages?15.—What is the special usefulness of the Grange in a rural community?16.—In what lines of business has cooperation proved successful in the country? Illustrate from the fruit growing industry.17.—Why has cooperation proved more successful in the newer sections of the country than in the East?18.—What can you say about the success of cooperation in Denmark?19.—What is the difference between a joint-stock creamery and a purely cooperative creamery?20.—In what ways can Christian people illustrate the principles of brotherhood and cooperation so as to overcome the social deficiencies of country life?
Test Questions on Chapter V
1.—How do you account for the extreme independence and individualism of the American farmer?
2.—In what unsocial ways does this rural individualism express itself?
3.—What common weakness do you notice in every sort of rural institution?
4.—Why do city people as a rule cooperate more readily than most country people do?
5.—Why has it proven a rather difficult task to organize farmers?
6.—How do you account for the fact that farmers have less influence in politics than lawyers, though the farmers are seventy times as numerous?
7.—In what ways do farmers need to cooperate in their business relations? Illustrate.
8.—What shows the failure of country folks to cooperate in religious activities?
9.—What old-fashioned forms of recreation are now seldom seen in the country? What has taken their place?
10.—Why is a wholesome play spirit so essential to the morals of a community?
11.—Suggest different ways to “socialize” a country community.
12.—What plans for rural betterment would you include in your community program for the people to work out together?
13.—What specific plans would you suggest for organized play and community recreation?
14.—What should be done about Sunday baseball in country villages?
15.—What is the special usefulness of the Grange in a rural community?
16.—In what lines of business has cooperation proved successful in the country? Illustrate from the fruit growing industry.
17.—Why has cooperation proved more successful in the newer sections of the country than in the East?
18.—What can you say about the success of cooperation in Denmark?
19.—What is the difference between a joint-stock creamery and a purely cooperative creamery?
20.—In what ways can Christian people illustrate the principles of brotherhood and cooperation so as to overcome the social deficiencies of country life?
HOW EFFICIENT RURAL CITIZENSHIP IS DEVELOPED
I. Weaknesses in Rural Education.
It is easy to blame the one-room schoolhouse for the failures of rural life. It would be fairer to say the rural schools have not kept pace with the rising standards of their own communities. There remains a deal of sentiment about the “little red schoolhouse” of the olden time; yet, discounted in cash, it fails even to keep the building painted. A recent survey of social conditions in northern Missouri reports that in thirty miles of travel on country roads not one unpainted barn or farmhouse was observed, but every schoolhouse was out of repair.
It is evident, both from this neglect of the property and the meager appropriation for school support, that the farmer to-day has no special loyalty to the little red schoolhouse. In fact in some quarters there is great dissatisfaction with the schools as distinctly hostile to rural life, not in sympathy with rural ideals, and serving mainly as a “gang-way” to the life of the town. The Country Life Commission reports: “The schools are held responsible for ineffective farming, lack of ideals and the drift to town. Thisis not because the rural schools as a whole are declining, but because they are in a state of arrested development, and have not yet put themselves in consonance with the recently changed conditions of life.”
The country people have a right to insist that their schools shall fit their boys and girls for country life, inculcate in them a genuine love for the country and an appreciation of rural values, with the natural expectation that most of them will be needed on the farm. Even if a third of the pupils should ultimately go to the city, it is unjust to the majority and to the community, to make the country school simply a preparation for city life.
The Urbanized Country School
“The education given to country children,” says Sir Horace Plunkett, “has been invented for them in the town, and it not only bears no relation to the life they are to lead, but actually attracts them toward a town career.”
From the beginning, doubtless, teachers have been largely city-trained. Though country-bred perhaps, they have caught the city fever and it seems to be very contagious. They have brought city manners and styles in clothing, the city standards and ideals and the love for city life. Unconsciously perhaps they have impressed the minds of children with the superiority of all things urban. Even the text-books are products of the city. The city curriculum has been adopted whole,—contrary to all reason. The teaching material often, instead of being connected with the farm, echoes the distant city’s surging life.It deals with stocks and bonds and commerce, rather than problems of the dairy, the silo or the soil.
The suggestive power of such books and teachers is very great with impressionable children. The lesson is quickly learned to honor commerce above farming, city speed above country thoroughness, superficial success above the homely virtues, and mere numbers, bigness, roar and hustle above the lasting joy of tested friendships. With the young minds filled with the tales of the wonderful city, which rival the Arabian Nights in allurement, the wonder is, not that so many are dazzled and follow the flame, but that so many remain on the farm. Insofar as the schools do stimulate the two great disintegrating tendencies of rural life, the townward trend of the boys and girls and the increase of absentee landlords, the country folks have a right to complain. Let the schools train for the soil rather than away from the soil. Let them exalt rural ideals and develop rural interests. Let them open the eyes of the country boys and girls not for fault finding and discontent, but to see the beauty of the country, the privilege of country freedom and the vast possibilities of scientific farming and soil productiveness. Before this can be done, normal schools for rural teachers must move out of the city, or import, straight from the country, enough country sense and sympathy to fit the teachers personally for their tasks. Probably the latter. To meet this evident need, progressive Wisconsin has established county training schools which give prospective teachers distinctly the rural point of view; and more than sixty normal schools have establishedspecial departments for the training of teachers in country life and the essentials of a rural education. Meanwhile some serious problems handicap the rural school.[31]
Inferior Equipment and Meager Support
There are twelve million country school children in the United States and only half that number of children in cities. Yet the city has invested twice as much as the country in public school property and spends far more for school support each year. The average country boy’s education costs but $12.52 a year; while the cities spend $30.78 annually on each pupil.
The question is a fair one, should the boy and girl be penalized for living in the country? Why should the boy who happens by the accident of birth to live in the country suffer a needless handicap? When our Puritan ancestors established the free public school system, the purpose was to maintainequal rights for all, the children of both rich and poor alike. The welfare of a republic depends on the maintenance of this principle.
It was a significant way-mark of human progress when schools were established in every community, in city or country, where all children might have an equal chance before the law. But with the growth of great cities and the decadence of once prosperousrural communities, the country boy has been losing his share. The city’s growth has in many ways cost the country dear. It is certainly but fair that in return the state as a whole should share the expense of the rural school.
The Weakness of the District System
A relic of pioneer days when rural life was closely organized within small communities, the district unit for school management still persists in most states to the present day. It originated in Massachusetts, but that state was the first to discard it, thirty years ago. Long ago Horace Mann declared the law of 1789 which established the district system “the most unfortunate law on the subject of common schools ever enacted in the state.”
The school district is too small a unit either for school management or taxation. It is democratic to a fault; but it is too easy for stingy individuals to control the situation and weaken the schools by their parsimony. Local jealousies and shameless favoritism also make the system bad. The loss of population has naturally aggravated this evil, leaving in many a once thriving school a little lonely group of children, devoid of any enthusiasm or school spirit. The township is the smallest possible unit for efficiency, and the county unit, so successful in Georgia and elsewhere in the South, is better still. Ultimately the state is likely to be the unit both of school taxation and administration. Only thus can reasonable uniformity and standard of efficiency be maintained, in city and country.
Other Problems of the Country School
Next to the blunder of the district unit, growing worse in the face of a shrinking population, is the serious difficulty of securing capable teachers and holding them long enough to gain real success. The problem of maintenance is crucial here. So small are the salaries, men are rapidly being crowded out of the ranks. In the North Atlantic states only one teacher in seven is a man; and less than one in four in all the country. There can be no hope for better rural schools till the salary is made respectable. Maryland, North Dakota and other states have enacted minimum salary laws which have decidedly raised the standard.
The problem of supervision is a serious one, especially when complicated with politics as is often true of the county or state superintendency. Professor H. W. Foght significantly suggests: “The man who supervises the schools should have at least as good an academic and professional preparation as the teacher working under him.This is seldom the case.” The incompetency of the school board, and the unwillingness of competent men to serve, still further complicates the problem. In many a community less earnest attention is given to the school which must train the boys and girls for life than is given to the problem of breeding horses and cattle.
In most rural communities the school building is still the little building of the “box-car type,” unattractive without and bare within, and as devoid of practical utility in equipment as of aesthetic charm.Equipment is less essential than personality, but to accomplish results with such a handicap is heartbreaking work. Slowly the modern type of rural school is making its appearance along the country-side; and by its sheer attractiveness is winning back to the school something of local pride.
The great problem of what to teach, in order best to fit the pupils for a satisfying and successful country life, is only beginning to be faced frankly by many rural schools. In the past six years, however, the idea has been slowly gaining attention that the country school does not need the city curriculum, but requires a special program of its own. This involves much more than the technical study of rudimentary agriculture, but it must include that. By giving the reasons underlying the ordinary processes of farming and introducing the boys to the elements of the science as well as stimulating them to become proficient in the oldest of the arts, the school is able to arouse a real ambition to remain in country life and be a successful farmer on modern lines.
II. Modern Plans for School Improvement.
Arguments for and Against Consolidation
The centralization of country schools has been forced by the logic of circumstances. “Suppose you start to a creamery with 100 pounds of milk, and 45 pounds leak out on the way, could you make your business pay?” asks Dr. J. W. Robertson, a Canadian leader. “And still, of every 100 children in the elementary schools, 45 of them fall out by the way,—inother words, the average attendance is but 55%. But the consolidated schools in the five eastern provinces, with their gardens, manual training and domestic economy, now bring 97 of 100 children to school every day, and with no additional expense.”
Consolidation is simply efficiency applied to the rural school situation. Instead of perhaps eight separate schools, housed in badly ventilated and insanitary buildings, with very poor equipment, there is one central building, modern in construction and satisfactory in every detail. Instead of eight teachers wasting time over six to fifteen pupils each, with no enthusiasm, there are four teachers working splendidly in team-work, and a fine school spirit, the pupils attending regularly, partly because they no longer have to trudge two miles to school but are conveyed at public expense and partly because they are more interested in a really effective school. The saving of waste sometimes makes it possible to conduct such a school at an actual reduction in expense over the district system, as is the experience in South Carolina. The motive, however, is not economy but to furnish the children better teaching and better facilities for effective education.
While consolidation clearly spells greater efficiency, the plan is obviously impossible under certain conditions and sometimes undesirable. In a widely scattered country the small district school is the only alternative to instruction at home, at least for children under high school age. There is a reasonable limit to the distance to which pupils should be carried. Opinions naturally will differ greatly in determining thisreasonable limit. Furthermore weather conditions greatly complicate the problem, particularly where muddy roads are impassable or the northern climate prescribes deep snow drifts which prohibit transportation. Of course even the neighborhood school suffers under these conditions; but the consolidated school in a large township would be obliged to close during seasons of extreme weather.
Consolidated school at North Madison, Madison Township, Lake County, Ohio.Eight conveyances filled with children may be seen lined up in the foreground.(Courtesy of A. B. Graham, College of Agriculture, Columbus, Ohio.)
The John Swaney School, District 532, McNabb, Illinois. Irwin A. Madden, Principal.
Moral and social objections must also be faced in this connection. Granting, as everyone must, the efficiency argument for the centralized rural school, we must be careful that our teaching efficiency is not gained at too high a cost. It is a rather serious thing for small children to be far from home regularly through the day; and the usual viewpoint of the mother easily wins our sympathy. We have less consideration for the community pride which suffers when the district is abolished as a social unit. But when we are reminded of the actual moral dangers to which children are sometimes subjected in the privacy of the covered wagon, we cannot dismiss the objection lightly. The solution, however, is not in the direction of the inefficient district school, for that, too, has its moral dangers; but in thorough supervision of the transportation under trustworthy adults.
While the gospel of consolidation is rapidly gaining, all through the country, closing thousands of unnecessary schools every year, the movement often meets determined opposition, though advocated by all leading educational authorities. In time, however, in a disintegrating community, the scarcity of children forces centralization. The Indiana statute makesthis automatic by its very sensible provisions. The law enacted eleven years ago permitted school trustees to close schools having less than 12 for an average attendance. The amended law of 1907 allowed the abandonment of schools with an attendance of 15 or less and made it compulsory if the number fell below 13. Consequently 679 rural schools in Indiana were abandoned in 1904, 830 in 1906 and 1,314 in 1908 and in the latter year 16,034 children were carried to school.
Advantages of Purely Rural Centralization
In a closely settled township the natural center for the consolidated school is the village, other things being equal. But if the center is a city or a large town, results are not ideal. It is not good for country children to be village or city commuters. If the driver is the right sort of a man, the drive itself need not be harmful; but distance from home, particularly in a village among strangers, day after day, is not a good thing for most children. Furthermore, to add the country children to the city or village school means one more method of exploiting the rural neighborhoods and urbanizing the children. From the country view-point it is not desirable. The town school does not pretend to fit for rural life, but is frankly based on city needs.
The purely rural type of consolidated school is gaining in favor. To this plan must country lovers look for a school which combines efficiency with real training for rural life and avoids many of the objections to village centralization. Professor Foght speaks ofit with enthusiasm: “This is the ideal type. It contemplates the establishment of the school right in the heart of the rural community, where the child can dwell in close communion with nature, away from the attractions and allurements of the city. In such an environment establish the farm child’s school. Build it good and large; equip it with all the working tools necessary to the greatest measure of successful work. Add broad acres for beautiful grounds and garden and experimental areas.And surely the rural school problem will then be in a fair way to solution.”[32]
A Thoroughly Modern Rural School
The finest type of the modern rural school seems to have been at last reports the “John Swaney School” in Putnam County, Illinois, located in the open country two miles from the small village of McNabb. This school was reported to the Cleveland Convention of the National Education Association, by a special committee on rural schools “as affording the best illustration of public sentiment, private liberality and wise organization combined, that the committee was able to find in any consolidated district in the United States.” In making this report Prof. O. J. Kern said further, “The building stands near the north side of a beautiful campus of twenty-four acres of timber pasture. This campus was donated by Mr. John Swaney, who is a farmer of moderate circumstances, a man who believes in better things for country children. His was a worthy deed in behalf of aworthy cause and should prove a suggestion and an inspiration to public spirited farmers in other communities. The consolidated school is an illustration of the fundamental fact that if country people want better schools in the country for country children, they must spend more money for education and spend it in a better way. There is no other way.”
The building is an attractive brick building located among beautiful shade trees. It contains four recitation rooms besides a large auditorium used for lectures, concerts and basket-ball; two laboratories, two library and office rooms, girls’ play room, cloak room, and a room in the basement for manual training which is well equipped. It has apparatus also for teaching cooking and sewing. It is equipped with steam heat, running water by air-pressure system, and a gasolene gas generator. The campus is ample for agricultural work besides the football and baseball fields and tennis courts and the home for the five resident teachers.
A Rural High School Course of Study
In the high school department of this consolidated school a well balanced curriculum is followed, based upon the special needs of rural life, strong in vocational courses, yet not lacking in the liberal culture studies. It includes the following:First Year, English I, Algebra, Physiology, Agronomy I or Latin, Household Science or Manual Training, Physical Geography, Horticulture or Latin.Second Year, English II, Algebra, Geometry, Zoology, Ancient History, Botany, Animal Husbandry or Household Science, Drawing and Music.Third Year, EnglishIII, Chemistry, Agronomy II or Latin or Household Science, English History, Animal Husbandry.Fourth Year, English IV, Physics, Household Science or Agronomy III, American History, Bookkeeping, Arithmetic and Civics. The farm laboratory work is in charge of experts from the Illinois Experiment Station.
Domestic Economy Rooms, Macdonald Consolidated School, Guelph, Canada.
Manual Training Department of the Same School.
Manual Training in a Small Rural School, Edgar County, Illinois.
As Dr. Warren H. Wilson states so well, “The teaching of agriculture is not for the making of farmers, but men and women. It must be more than a mere school of rural money-making. The teaching of agriculture needed in the schools is for the purpose of training in country life. The country school must make the open country worth while. It will teach agriculture as the basis of an ideal life, rather than as a quick way of profits.” However, though this is strictly true of the boys who study agriculture, if they can actually become proficient enough to give their fathers points, the evident “practical” value of the modern school will appeal so strongly to the farmers that its future support is assured. The farmers cannot be blamed for having little love for the school which alienates their children from country life; but schools which really train for rural citizenship will be appreciated by the country folks. And in time there will be more John Swaneys, men who will show their love for a real school for country life by endowing it after the manner of the old New England academies.
Elementary Agriculture and School Gardens
To delay the teaching of agriculture until the highschool years would be to lose its most strategic value. It should be a regular course in all rural schools, beginning before the natural rural interests have been turned to discontent. As a rural educator says, “Let them early learn to know nature and to love it, and to know that they are indigenous to the soil; that here they must live and die. Give us many such schools, and the farm youth is in no danger of leaving the farm.”
Although agricultural teaching has been slowly winning its way into our American schools, it has been a feature of even the primary schools in France since 1879 and in most other European countries more recently. The wonderful agricultural revival of Denmark dates from the introduction of this subject in the schools. Elementary agriculture is taught in every rural district of the land, and it gives the children that love for the very soil which makes Danish patriotism unique.
The Macdonald movement in Canada, backed by the government, has put that country well in the lead on our continent in this matter. It is spreading fast now in the States, however. Seven states in the South alone require by law agricultural instruction in rural schools. Many states now require normal school students to prepare to teach the subject as an essential branch of rural education; so that its future is assured.
The laboratory work in school gardens is a most interesting feature of great value. Only recently has the garden movement developed in America, beginning in Roxbury, Boston, in 1891; but every Europeannation but England popularized it long ago. Comenius believed that “a garden should be connected with every school,” and his country, Moravia, early enacted this conviction into law. The rural schools of Prussia introduced school gardens as early as 1819; and they are now common everywhere in continental Europe. The movement is now spreading fast in this country and has proved very successful in stimulating interest in listless boys. In Dayton, Ohio, school gardens were established in 1903, and it has been observed there that boys taking gardening make 30% more progress than others in their studies. The moral effects are sometimes notable, especially in vicious surroundings.
III. Allies of the School in Rural Education.
School Improvement Leagues
This movement started in Maine, where it has over 60,000 members, and has spread to other states. It seeks to stimulate the loyalty of pupils, teachers and patrons to the schools in every feasible way. It gives coherence and direction to a rising local pride in a successful school and helps greatly to develop a local school spirit. When once aroused, this interest can be directed in any useful way which is most needed at the time. It often finds most natural expression in beautifying the school grounds with shrubbery, trees and flowers, and in furnishing the rooms with pictures and artistic decorations of real merit. Rural communities are proverbially lacking in aesthetic taste, and this is the best method conceivablefor developing it. From a well-kept schoolyard, and schoolrooms relieved of their bareness by copies of the great masterpieces, there will radiate all through the township the spirit of order and beauty which will bless the whole community.
Rural Libraries and Literature
The state of Massachusetts, where the first free public library was opened long ago, now has such an institution in every town and city of the Commonwealth. In most states, however, libraries in rural communities are not common; but in many states traveling libraries are obtainable from the state librarian which vastly broaden the mental outlook of the country people. In these days of abundant books, it is easier to secure books than it is to be sure that the books will get read. Rural reading circles and literary clubs can serve their communities well by helping to popularize the reading habit, and advising in the choice of books.
So vast has the country literature become in recent years, one can little imagine the great educational service of the numerous farm journals and magazines of country life. Rare is the farmer’s home where none of them enters. They have apparently great influence in broadening the horizons of the farm home as well as teaching the people the newer ideals of our rural civilization. So popular has the topic of rural life recently become, many non-rural magazines frequently bring it before their readers, notably theWorld’s Work. As a magazine devoted to all the interests of the country life movement, and franklyreligious in its purpose,Rural Manhoodis unique in its sphere. It is the organ of the Rural Young Men’s Christian Association and by its remarkably broad survey of rural social movements has made itself indispensable to lovers of the country.
Farmers’ Institutes and Government Cooperation
Space forbids even the enumeration of all the agencies and methods by which the standards of rural education are being raised. Both state and national governments, the state experiment stations and the department of agriculture at Washington are constantly reporting the latest results of agricultural science and investigation both in the form of printed bulletins and public sessions of Farmers’ Institutes and similar occasions. The great majority of working farmers have not yet learned to value and to use these privileges as they should; but the appreciative ones who do use them are becoming constantly better informed about the secrets of country life and the wonderful ways of nature. The great national organization of the Grange, by its local discussions of farm topics and its effective lecture work, is another of the great educational forces in rural life, and the rural church and minister often have a fine educational opportunity, especially in country communities where the educational equipment is meager and the unmet need is great.
Agricultural Colleges and their Extension Work
Essentially a part of the government service, thestate colleges of agriculture with their learned faculties of rural experts are the ultimate authorities in agriculture and all rural interests, and therefore are both the climax and the ultimate source of education for country life. With the remarkable popularity the past five years of rural study and the strong trend toward the rural professions, the agricultural colleges are probably growing faster than any other schools in the land. The Massachusetts State College has doubled in numbers and doubtless in efficiency in the past five years, and many other schools have shown remarkable development. With a faculty of a hundred men, and a budget this year of half a million dollars, the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell has become in reality a great school of liberal culture interpreted in terms of country life. Its enrolment has multiplied by five in the past nine years. The extension work accomplished by these and similar institutions is wonderfully broad and more and more serviceable to the people of their several states, as their community of interest is increasingly appreciated. The teachers are no longer “mere book farmers.” They are constantly out among the people for every variety of social service; and the people, once or twice a year during the great “Farmers’ Weeks” flock to the college by the hundred with no feeling of restraint but of actual ownership.
It is thus, from the humblest “box-car school” to the great university, that the people of the open country are being educated to appreciate their privileges and to live a more effective country life. It is a great educational movement, weak and halting hereand there, but moving on with a better sense of unity and a clearer vision of the goal, with every passing decade. It all gives us courage to believe that the providence of God has in store for our rural America not the stolid domination of a rural peasantry, mere renters and pirates of the soil, but ultimately an enlightened, progressive citizenship, alert for progress and unswerving in their loyalty to “the holy land.”