Rural Life and the Rural School

by Joseph Kennedy

Games.—There are excellent opportunities in the country for all kinds of games, for there ample room and many incentives to activity present themselves. In the city, children are often content with seeing experts and professionals give performances or "stunts," while they, themselves, remain passive. In the country there are not so many attractions and distractions—so many dazzling and overwhelmingly "superior" things—that children may not be easily induced to "get into the game" themselves. I fear that in recent years owing to imitation of the city and its life, play and games in the country have become somewhat obsolete. There needs to be a renaissance in this field. We have been offered everywhere in recent years so much of what might be called the "finished product" that the children are content merely to sit around as spectators and watch others give the performances.

As in the case of the rural school the play instincts of country children must be awakened again in behalf of rural life in general. There are scores of games and sports, from marbles to football, which should receive attention. In recent years the social mind, in all sports, seems to be directed to the result, the winning or losing, instead of to the game, as a game, and the fun of it all. True sportsmanship should be revived and cultivated. There is no reason why there should not be found in every neighborhood, and especially at every school center, all kinds of plays and games, each in its own time and place and having its own patronage—marbles, tops, swings, horseshoes, "I spy," anti-over, pull-away, prisoner's base, tennis, croquet, volley ball, basketball, skating, coasting, skiing, baseball, and football. Horizontal bars, turning pole, and other apparatus should be provided in every playground. In the social centers, if the boys can be organized as Boy Scouts, and the girls as Camp-Fire Girls, good results will ensue.

Many more plays and games will suggest themselves, and those for girls should be encouraged as well as those for boys. All the aspects of rural life can thus be made most enjoyable. It is often well to introduce and cultivate one game at a time, letting it run its course, something like a fever, and then, at the psychological moment, introduce and try out another. To introduce too many at one time would not afford an opportunity for children to experience the rise and fall of a wave of enthusiasm on any one, and this is quite important. Usually some direction should be given to play, but this direction should not be suppressive, and should be given by a leader who understands and sympathizes with child nature.

Inventiveness in Rural Life.—In the city, where everything is manufactured or sold ready-made, a person simply goes to the store and buys whatever he needs. In the country this cannot be done, and one is driven by sheer necessity to devise ways and means of supplying his needs, himself. He simply has to invent or devise a remedy. Necessity is the mother of invention.

It is really better for boys and girls in the country if their parents are compelled to be frugal and economical. If children get anything and everything they wish, merely for the asking, they are undone; they become weak for lack of self-exertion, self-expression, and invention; they become dissatisfied if everything is not coming their way from others. They become selfish and careless. Having tasted of the best, merely for the asking, they become dissatisfied with everything except the best. This is the dominant tendency in the city and wherever parents are foolish enough to satisfy the child's every whim. If the parents carry the child in this manner, the child, in later years, will have weak legs and the parents will have weak backs. Moreover, love and respect move in the direction of activity, and if everything comes the child's way there will be little love, except "cupboard love," going the other way.

It is unfortunate for children to experience the best too early in life; there is then no room for growth and development. It was Professor James who said that the best doll he ever saw was a home-made rag doll; it left sufficient room for the play of the imagination. With the perfect, factory-made doll there is nothing more for the imagination to do; it is complete, but it is not the little girl who has completed it. In the country, men and women, boys and girls are induced to begin and complete all kinds of things. Many things have to be made outright and most things have to be repaired on the farm. Challenges of this kind to inventiveness and activity are outstanding all the time. Sleds, both large and small, wheelbarrows and hay racks, sheds, granaries, and barns are both made and repaired. But in all there is no mad rush. It is not as it is in the factory or in the sawmill. One is not reduced to the instantaneous reactions of an automaton; he has time to breathe and to think. One can act like a free man rather than like a machine. There is room for thought and for invention.

Activity Rather than Passivity.—In this infinite variety of stimulation and response, the youth is induced to become active rather than passive. While he is not pushed unduly, he is reasonably active during all his waking hours, and the habit of activity, of doing, is ingrained. This is closely related to character and morality, to thrift and success. Such a person is more likely to be a creditor than a debtor to society. In this respect the country and the farm have been the salvation of many a youth.

In the city many children have no regular employment; they have no chores to do and no regular occupation. Evenings and vacations find them on the streets. Then Satan always finds mischief for idle hands to do. These children become passive except under the impulses of instinct or of mischievous ideas; they have no regular and systematic work to do; everything is done for them. During their early years habits of idleness, of passive receptivity, of mischief, and possibly of crime, are ingrained. And though this kind of life may be more pleasurable, in a low sense, than the active life of the country, there can be no doubt as to which is the more wholesome and strengthening.

Child Labor.—A good child-labor law is absolutely essential to the welfare of the children for whom it has been enacted; nevertheless, there has been a great omission in not providing that idle children shall do some work. Even in large cities there are probably more children who do not work enough than there are who are made to work too hard. In our zeal we sometimes forbid children to work, when some work would be the very best thing for them. It is true that on the farm as well as in the factory ignorant and mercenary parents make dollars out of the sweat of their children, when these should be going to school or engaged in physical and mental recreation and development. It is unfortunate that society is not able to see to it, that, as in Plato's Republic, every child and every person engage in the work or study for which he is best fitted, and to the extent that is best for him. Then the hundreds of thousands of children who are idling would be engaged in some kind of occupation, and those who are working too hard would be given lighter tasks; and all would have the privilege of an appropriate education.

The Finest Life on Earth.—In view of such circumstances and opportunities, life in the country should be, and could be made, the best and most complete life possible to a human being. Country life is the best cradle of the race. To have a good home and rear a family in the heart of a great city is well-nigh impossible for the average laboring man. The struggle for existence is too fierce and the opportunity, in childhood and youth, for self-expression and initiative is too meager. The environment is too vast, complex, and overwhelming, with nothing worth while for the child to do. "Individuals may stand, but generations will slip" on such an inclined plane of life. From this point of view it can be truly said, we think, that "God made the country while man made the town."