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. This is 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 established special 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 maintain equal rights for all, the children of both rich and poor alike. The welfare of a republic depends on the maintenance of this principle.