New Ideals in Rural Schools

by George Herbert Betts

Careful statistical studies[5] have shown that many rural teachers, both men and women, have had no training beyond that of the elementary school. And not infrequently this training has taken place in the rural school of the type in which they themselves take up teaching. The average schooling of the men teaching in the rural schools of the entire country is less than two years above the elementary school, and of women, slightly more than two years. This is to say that our rural schools are taught by those who have had only about half of a high school course.

It is evident, therefore, that the rural teacher cannot meet the requirement urged above in the way of preparation. He does not know his subject-matter. Not only has he not gone far enough in his education to have a substantial foundation, breadth of view, and mental perspective, but he frequently lacks in the simplest rudiments of the immediate subject-matter which he is supposed to teach. The examination papers written by applicants for certificates to begin rural school teaching often betray a woful ignorance of the most fundamental knowledge. Inability to spell, punctuate, or effectively use the English language is common. The most elementary scientific truths are frequently unknown. A connected view of our nation's history and knowledge of current events are not always possessed. The great world of literature is too often a closed book. And not seldom the simple relations of arithmetical number are beyond the grasp of the applicant. In short, our rural schools, as they average, require no adequate preparation of the teacher, and do not represent as much education in their teaching force as that needed by the intelligent farmer, merchant, or tradesman.

The rural teacher does not know the child. But little more than children themselves, and with little chance for observation or for experience in life, it would be strange if they did. They have had no opportunity for professional study, and psychology and the science of education are unknown to them. The attempts made to remedy this fatal weakness by the desultory reading of a volume or two in a voluntary reading-circle course do not serve the purpose. The teacher needs a thorough course of instruction in general and applied psychology, under the tutelage of an enthusiastic expert who not only knows his subject, but also understands the problems of the teacher.

The rural teacher does not know the technique of the schoolroom. The organizing of a school, the proper classification of pupils, the assignment of studies, the arrangement of a program of studies and recitation, the applications of suitable regulations and rules for the running of the school, are all matters requiring expert knowledge and skill. Yet the rural teacher has to undertake them without instruction in their principles and without supervisory guidance or help. No wonder that the rural school is poorly organized and managed. It presents problems of administration more puzzling than the town school, and yet here is where we put out our novices, boys and girls not yet out of their "teens"—young people who themselves have no concept of the problems of the school, no knowledge of its complex machinery, and no experience to serve as a guide in confronting their work. No industrial enterprise could exist under such irrational conditions; and neither could the schools, except that mental waste and bankruptcy are harder to measure than economic.

Nor does the rural teacher know the technique of instruction any better than that of organization and management. The skillful conducting of a recitation is at least as severe a test upon mental resourcefulness and skill as making a speech, preaching a sermon, or conducting a lawsuit. For not only must the subject-matter be organized for immature minds unused to the formal processes of learning, but the effects of instruction upon the child's mind must constantly be watched by the teacher and interpreted with reference to further instruction. This skill cannot be attained empirically, by the cut-and-dried method, except at a frightful cost to the children. It is as if we were to turn a set of intelligent but untrained men loose in the community with their scalpels and their medicine cases to learn to be surgeons and doctors by experimenting upon their fellows.

As would naturally be expected, therefore, the teaching in the average rural school is a dreary round of inefficiency. Handicapped to begin with by classes too small to be interesting, the rural teacher is mechanically hearing the recitations of some twenty-five to thirty of these classes per day. Lacking at the beginning the breadth of education that would make teaching easy, he finds it impossible to prepare for so many different exercises daily. The result is that the recitations are dull, spiritless, uninteresting. The lessons are poorly prepared by the pupils, poorly recited, and hence very imperfectly mastered. The more advanced work cannot stand on such a foundation of sand, and so, discouraged, the child soon drops out of school.

When it is also remembered that the tenure of service of the teacher is very short in the rural schools, the problem becomes all the more grave. The average term of service in the rural schools is probably not above two years, and in many States considerably below this amount. This requires that half of the rural teachers each year shall be beginners. It will be impossible, of course, as long as teaching is done so largely by girls, who naturally will, and should, soon quit teaching for marriage, to secure a long period of service in the vocation. Yet the rural school is, as we have seen, also constantly losing its trained teachers to the town and city, and hence breaking in more than its share of novices.

Added to the disadvantage inevitably coming from the brief period of service in teaching is a similar one growing out of a faulty method of administration. In a large majority of our rural schools the contract is made for but one term of not more than three months. This leaves the teacher free to accept another school at the end of the term, and not infrequently a school will have two or even three different teachers within the same year. There is a great source of waste at this point, owing to a change of methods, repetition of work, and the necessity of starting a new system of school machinery. Industrial concerns would hardly find it profitable to change superintendents and foremen several times a year. We do this in our schools only because we have not yet learned that it pays to apply rational business methods to education.

Nothing that has been said in criticism of rural teaching ought to be construed as a reflection on the rural teachers personally. The fact that they can succeed as well as they do under conditions that are so adverse is the best warrant for their intelligence and devotion. It is not their fault that they begin teaching with inadequate knowledge of subject-matter, with ignorance of the nature of childhood, and without skill in the technique of the schoolroom. The system, and not the individual, is at fault. The public demands a pitifully low standard of efficiency in rural teaching, and the excellence of the product offered is not likely greatly to surpass what society asks and is ready to pay for.