Increased Production Not Sufficient. Hitherto the agencies for rural improvement, both state and federal, have directed their energies chiefly toward increased production. And this with but scant consideration for profits that should be realized by the producer as a result of the larger yields. Material prosperity, however, is not a sufficient motive, except where it assuredly is used to improve the moral and social conditions of the community life. To double the yield of crops without doubling the enjoyments of living and improving home comforts accordingly, will avail but little toward developing rural conditions that will withstand the competition and false allurements of the city.
Urban Degeneracy. A nation's strength, moreover, is a matter of blood and brain fiber. Urban degeneracy is an accepted biological fact. The dissipation, lack of physical exercise in the open air, and high pressure living and working leaves in its trail a progeny diminishing in numbers and decadent in those high qualities essential to good government.
Democracy, as a permanent institution, however, is not yet an assured fact. The experiment of self-government is still in the making. Its perpetuity cannot be predicated upon scheming traders, money brokers and political manipulators, but must depend in the last analysis upon the solid phlegm and conservatism of its rural districts where men are too busy with productive labor to scheme for political office or unearned wealth. In other words, and I speak it with sincerity, the rural population conserves the real dependable life blood of this nation. It is an accepted fact that in every crisis of our country's history the rural population was not only on the side of right, but ready to defend the nation's honor with their votes or with their blood.
When the nation's debt was appalling and money poured into the national treasury in but feeble currents, the tariffs that replenished it again were borne like a young Hercules by the farming class, though they received but a minimum of its protection. Every influence, therefore, that tends to exalt agriculture as a profession, and farming as a desirable mode of life, whether it be intellectual, political, ethical or spiritual, is for the general welfare.
The time is not far distant, let us hope and pray, when agriculture will cast off the thralldom of the ages and assert her own. But not until the sons and daughters of the country, trained for rural social and industrial service, as you are being trained, assert an aggressive leadership, with genuine patriotism for the needs of the open country, will the domination of ulterior interests be removed and agriculture made free to manage its educational institutions and business affairs, in part at least, for its own good.
The Rural School Problem. Since education is the governing factor, especially so far as it directs the attitude of rural children toward rural conditions, the country school should be so redirected and revitalized as to "stir into action community forces which are now dormant; and to make the rural school a strong and efficient social center, working for the upbuilding of all the varied interests of a healthy rural life."
"The redirection of rural education means that the school is to abandon its city ideals and standards, except as these are adaptable to rural as well as to city schools, and to develop its instruction with reference to its environment and the local interests and needs. The main efforts of its instruction should be to put its pupils into sympathetic touch with the rural life about them, in which the great majority of them ought to find their future homes."—Cubberley.
The away-from-the-farm-influence of rural education which has in the past proved a serious handicap to rural progress and open country pursuits, would thus be materially counteracted.
Quoting Cubberley again:
"The uniform text-books which have been introduced by law, were books written primarily for the city child; the graded course of study was a city course of study; the ideals of the school become, in large part, city and professional in type; and the city-educated and city-trained teachers have talked of the city, over-emphasized the affairs of the city, and sighed to get back to the city to teach. The subjects of instruction have been formal and traditional, and the course of instruction has been designed more to prepare for entrance to a city or town high school than for life in the open country. So far as the school has been vocational in spirit, it has been the city vocations and professions for which it has tended to prepare its pupils, and not the vocations of the farm and the home."