It would be safe to wager a red apple that the inside of the building is every bit as dilapidated as the outside. A community that tolerates such a building would not be likely to have anything but the rudest furniture and most of that on crutches. It would be something out of the usual if the box stove is not short a leg or two, with brick-bats being used as substitutes. You will be fortunate if the stove door has two good hinges and if the wood is not green. At the last school meeting, did the patrons instruct the trustees not to pay more than six dollars per week for your services? Was the proposition that the district raise five dollars, to which the State would add five more for the purchase of books for a library, unanimously voted down and the poor man who introduced the resolution expected to apologize for his temerity? The leading man in the district each Sunday during summer drives two miles to salt his young stock, inspect fences, and see how the yearlings are prospering; but he never thinks of visiting the school to see how his children are progressing. Yet the people of this district are not bad. They are counted good citizens by the bar and judge, when they are drawn on juries. The public buildings at the county-seat are models of their kind and these gentlemen do not remonstrate as to the expense. Perhaps it has not occurred to them that school buildings and grounds should have as high a standard as those of the county. A correct public ideal is everything. It is not a hopeless undertaking to advance such an ideal in the community of which we are speaking.
I suggest to you as teacher in this school to undertake some improvements in the grounds. I consider the above sketch to be a zero case. If improvements can be developed here, it is reasonable to suppose that the same can be repeated where conditions are primarily better. The possibilities are sufficient to warrant the undertaking. The victory will add to your strength. The lives of the children will be better filled for the part they may do, and you will have started a public improvement.
Fig. 293. "The girls organized themselves into a tug-of-war team."
I should not appeal to the parents for help. You have a fountain of power in the children. It is necessary only to inspire and guide them. This is no theory of mine. It is a result that has been worked out in many instances.
The beautiful city of Rochester is proud of its schools. The development of the town made the construction of new school buildings necessary to such an extent that little money remained for the improvement of the grounds. Some of them were located in the breadwinners' districts. The grounds were as the contractor left them; your imagination can picture their condition. The interiors were well nigh perfect. The exterior was sometimes a Sahara of mud and builders' rubbish. The principal of one of the schools—a woman, by the way,—knowing the force in children, set about to apply it to the improvement of the surroundings. Her method was first to inspire, and then to direct. Her success was ample. Both boys and girls participated. The girls organized themselves into a tug-of-war team ([Fig. 293]). By fastening ropes to sticks and beams, these things were hauled out of sight. The boys leveled the hummocks and brought fertile soil from some distance. This principal confined her improvements to small areas—so small that the children wanted to do more when they were through. From the time school opened until the rigors of winter stopped the juvenile improvements, only part of the space from the front of the building to the street was graded. Some of the boys brought chaff from a haymow, which was raked in as lawn grass seed. The following spring quite as many weeds appeared as grass, but the children gave the weeds the personification of robbers and made their career short. The promoters had a just pride in what they had accomplished; and that meagre bit of lawn meant vastly more to them than had it been made by a high-salaried landscape gardener.
I am acquainted with another instance, where the patrons are largely Polish Jews. I am credibly informed that the average head of a family does not have a gross annual income to exceed three hundred and fifty dollars. This necessitates that the mother go out for work and that the children leave school as soon as the law allows to take up work. Yet with all these unfavorable circumstances the pupils have a pride in their school grounds that is glorious to see. In the fall of 1901 prizes were offered for the greatest improvement of school grounds made by children. Nothing daunted, the principal entered his grounds in competition with those in the more wealthy part of the city. The committee of awards gave him the third prize. To judge from the mere physical side, the decision was no doubt just; but when judged on the score of getting the greatest results from the least material, the principal and his school may have deserved the first prize, plus a reward.
The chances are that your fuel is wood, and perhaps not very dry at that. It is in a pile in the open. Sometimes the sticks are scattered over half the lot. This you can prevent by properly appealing to the pride of your pupils. You will find that they wish to be more tidy than is the school over in Whippoorwill Hollow or in some other district that is considered to be a little more in the back country than your own.
About the time you hear the first spring notes of the bluebird and the robin, prepare public opinion in your little school community for a spring furnishing. You can devise many ways to inspire them. Tell them about Col. George R. Waring and his white brigade and what they did to make New York City cleaner than it had been for many decades before. After the Spanish war, when Cuba became a responsibility upon the United States, the question arose as to what could be done to make filthy Havana cleaner and freer from yellow fever. No one was thought by the Federal government so competent to solve the problem as Colonel Waring. He went, spared not himself, and did his duty, did it so fearlessly that he died the victim of the filth he had fought so valiantly. He had done much during previous years to commend his memory to posterity; but probably nothing will stand out so prominently as his great ability to correct municipal untidiness. Ask your pupils to be Warings in their own neighborhoods.
By this time the ground will be bare of snow and it will be soft. Ask some of the pupils to bring rakes, and have them gather up the rubbish. You can all play gypsies when you gather about the bonfire. This will be a favorable time to sow grass seed; for I have no doubt the school lot will need it. A lawn mixture of seed would be ideal, but I hardly expect you to pay for it. At this stage of your improvements, I scarcely expect that any of the patrons of your school would do so either. Later some of them may feel differently. Your pupils can at least follow the plan of those spoken of in Rochester—get chaff from a haymow. It will inevitably be a mixture of grass and weeds, but the latter can be pulled out after germinating. It is barely possible that some farmer will give you some clover and timothy, such as he uses in seeding his meadow; and this will be far better.