Domestic science and manual training. In general what is true of agriculture is true of domestic science and manual training. They can be presented in the elementary school only in the most concrete and applied form. But they can be successfully presented in this form, and must be if the rural school child is to have an equal opportunity with the town and city child. The girls can be taught the art of sewing, cooking, and serving, if only the necessary equipment and instruction are available. They are ready to learn, the subject-matter is adapted to their age and understanding, and nothing could be more vital to their interests and welfare.
Likewise the boys can be taught the use of tools, the value and finishing of different kinds of woods, and can develop no little skill with their hands, while they are at the same time receiving mental development and the cultivation of practical interests from this line of work. It is not in the least a question of the readiness of the boys to take up and profit by this subject, but is only a matter of equipment and teaching.
Music and art. Nor should the finer aspects of culture be left out of the education of the country child. He will learn music as readily as the city child, and love it not less. Indeed, he needs it even more as a part of his schooling, since the opportunities to hear and enjoy music are always at hand in the city, and nearly always lacking in the country. The child should be taught to sing and at least to understand and appreciate music of worthy type.
The same principle will apply to art. The great masterpieces of painting and sculpture have as much of beauty and inspiration in them as the great masterpieces of literature. Yet most rural children complete their schooling hardly having seen in the schoolroom a worthy copy of a great picture, and much less have they been taught the significance of great works of art or been led to appreciate and love them.
Physical training. It has been argued by many that the rural child has enough exercise and hence does not need physical training. But this position entirely misconceives the purpose of physical training. One may have plenty of exercise, even too much exercise, without securing a well-balanced physical development. Indeed, certain forms of farm work done by children are often so severe a tax on their strength that a corrective exercise is necessary in order to save stooped forms, curved spines, and hollow chests. Furthermore, the farm child, lacking the opportunities of the city child for gaining social ease and control, needs the development that comes from physical training to give poise, ease of bearing, and grace of movement.
Nor must the athletic phase of physical training be overlooked. While it is undoubtedly true that athletics have come to occupy too large a part of the time and absorb too great a proportion of the interest in many schools, yet this is no reason for omitting avocational training wholly from the rural school. Children require the training and development that come from games and play quite as much as they need that coming from work. The school owes a duty to the avocational side of life as well as to the vocational.
The curriculum here proposed is so much broader and richer than that now offered in the rural district school that it will appear to many to be visionary and impossible. That it is impossible for the old type of rural school will be readily admitted. But it is entirely practicable and possible in the reorganized consolidated school, and is being successfully presented, in its general aspects, at least, in many of these schools. It is only such an education as every rural child is entitled to, and is no more than the urban child is already receiving in the better class of town and city elementary schools. If the rural school cannot give the farm child an elementary education approximating the one out-lined, it has no claim on his loyalty or time; and he should in justice to himself be taken where he can receive a worthy education, even if he is thereby lost to the farm.
But the rural boy and girl need not only a good elementary education, but a high school education as well. Let us next consider the rural high school curriculum.