New Ideals in Rural Schools

by George Herbert Betts

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.

It has been found in all instances that public conveyance of pupils to the consolidated schools greatly increases rural school patronage. It makes the school accessible. The regular wagon service does away with the "hit-and-miss" method of determining for each succeeding day whether it is advisable for the child to start for school. So important is this factor in securing attendance, that a careful study by Knorr[3] of the attendance in Ohio district and consolidated schools shows twenty-seven per cent more of the total school population in school under the influence of public conveyance and other features peculiar to consolidation than under the district system. He concludes that, broadly speaking, by a system of consolidated schools with public conveyance, rural school attendance can be increased by at least one fourth.