I have a vivid recollection of those early days when I was crowded into a 16 × 20 school-house, with two score other bounding, mischievous urchins, all seated on the hard side of unbacked, long-legged slab benches, which left our bare legs, for which the flies had a liking, to dangle between heaven and earth. True, all this has now been improved, and good and appropriate seats are usually provided, but this only ameliorates the conditions; it does not cure them. If the parents who have lost something of their first love for their children, or who are too lazy or careless or ignorant to teach them, will go to these patent-seated school-rooms and sit for five mortal hours on one of these hard, wooden, uncushioned seats, they will no longer place their tender children in these modernized stocks. You who no longer have the hot blood and restless nervous energy of youth make long faces and complain bitterly from your well cushioned pew, if the over-earnest pastor prolongs his sermon ten minutes beyond the customary time. It may be said that many, nevertheless, secured a primary education under these unfavorable conditions. But I did not; I received it at my mother’s knee in the old kitchen, some of it before daylight. About all I got in that old school-house were kicks and cuffs from boys who were older and stronger than I, and round shoulders from sitting through many weary hours on backless benches, and blistered hands in punishment for my unrestrained interest in things in general, and in my school-mates in particular.
But what has all this to do with the opportunities which a farm life gives for education? It is to emphasize the need of more home training, more personal attention by the parents, and a more natural and rational education of those whom it has been our responsibility to bring into existence, and upon whose shoulders will rest the weal or woe of our country. In these rural homes, children should be reared and educated until they have reached the point beyond which their parents or the older children cannot carry them. The child, when only two or three years old, begins to learn handicraft, performs some little helpful act for another; it is being taught to work. As it becomes more mature it is to do useful things; but who thinks of keeping the child of eight to ten years of age at continuous work for five or six hours daily? Why not carry on the child’s mental education along these natural lines in the same manner as it receives its primary technical education?
I am almost persuaded that the farmers’ children would be better off if the old red school-house on the dusty, treeless four corners was abandoned, and the responsibility for the education of the children up to twelve or fourteen years of age was thrown upon the parents. As it is, the parents who have received a fairly good primary education become rusty and illiterate simply from non-use of the education which they had when they left the schools. If the unexcelled opportunities which rural life offers for securing a primary education were only utilized, there would be fewer country youths hating even the sight of that red school-house which has received such honorable mention. It has been glorified in every Fourth of July oration, but it still remains not only unevolutionized but even degenerated.
If you ever imagined that the best provision has been made for teaching the little ones, spend a day in one of these school-houses. Take some book with you that is as abstract and useless to you as the children believe their books to be to them, and make the attempt to memorize a single page, or essay to write a composition on “The Immortality of the Soul,” or on “The Wisdom of Annexing the South Sea Islands.” Meantime, classes are reciting in falsetto voices; the teacher is giving many admonitions and making dire threats; a festive bumblebee has found its way through the open window and makes as much commotion among the timid girls as a mouse at a tea-party. Now a dog barks, and the boys know that Bowser has safely treed a squirrel. Before you have had time to collect your thoughts a lusty farm boy, perched on a creaking wain, whooping loudly to his team, goes rattling by. Stay a week and finish your composition, and see how fast your children are securing disjointed fractions of an education. A half-hour of continuous, quiet, intensified study at home is worth more than a day in many a school-room where little muddy driblets of knowledge are being doled out to the children.
You may say that you have no time to teach children. Business is too pressing, and you are already overworked. You should have thought of that sooner, and been wholly selfish and saved the money and time you spent to persuade that beautiful maiden to join you and help perform the duties and functions of life.
You will certainly agree that home education is the best, the ideal education. For a child, an hour or two of study and recreation a day, an equal time employed in useful work, and the rest of the day spent in picking up fun and facts, both of which may be found in abundance on the old farm, is the natural way to secure a broad primary foundation, upon which to rest a liberal education.
After the child has reached the age of ten or twelve and has had careful home training, what provision can be made for continuing its education during the next four to six years? Two or more districts might be joined to form one, for graded school purposes. On every farm is, or should be, a spare horse and a light wagon; a few dollars would provide a stable near the school building. Such an arrangement would permit the children to drive to and from the central school, although the distance might be two or three miles. All this means that the children will be around the family fireside in the evening instead of on the street, as is too frequently the case when they are sent to the village or city school and remain during the week. All this keeps the boys and girls in sympathy and healthful touch with home life and their parents, until character has been strengthened by age and knowledge. Here, in these country and village graded schools, the home life, with its restraints and duties, is preserved. Only the mentally strong or the courageous and aspiring will seek the halls of higher learning, from which, if they tend to go astray or neglect their work, they are quickly returned to the bosom of their families. If the central graded school is impracticable in some cases, then a few families might join and employ a private instructor; this would be far cheaper and more satisfactory than to send the children away from home.
It is not so much lack of facilities as a lack of an appreciation of the true value of an education which debars the country youth from securing even a wholesome and logical primary education. The value of an education for citizenship must be placed first, and its value as a money-making power second. Now the first question that is usually asked is, Will an education help to secure a position or to make money? The question, Will an education help to a nobler citizenship? is not even thought of. We shall have no evolution in rural training until the parents secure a clearer conception of the true value of an education.
Evolution along educational lines has already begun, and it is not difficult to see many beneficial effects of the changed methods. M. Demolins’ recent book has this to say: “‘It is useless to deny the superiority of the Anglo-Saxons. We may be vexed by this superiority, but the fact remains, despite our vexation.’... Considering the superiority conclusively proved, the author proceeds to search for the cause of this superiority. He finds the secret of this irresistible power of the Anglo-Saxon world in the education of its youth, in the direction given to studies, to the spirit which reigns in the school. The English and the people of the United States have perceived that the needs of the time require that youth should be trained to become practical, energetic men, and not public functionaries or pure men of letters, who know life only from what they learn in books. M. Demolins has personally studied with care some prominent English schools. In these he found the school buildings, not as in France, immense structures with the aspect of a barrack or a prison, but the pupils were distributed among cottages, in which efforts were made to give the place the appearance of a home. They were not surrounded by high walls, but there was an abundance of air and light and space and verdure. In place of the odious refectories of the French colleges, the dining-room was like that of a family, and the professors and director of the school, with his wife and daughters, sat at table with the pupils.”[2]
[2] Editorial, “Literary Digest,” July 2, 1898.