In many cases the county school superintendents are elected by the people who, in the main, are the parents of children. When the position of the superintendent depends upon the will of the parent farmers, it is often impossible to enforce the attendance law.
PRACTICAL CURRICULUM NEEDED
There is widespread dissatisfaction with the present program of the public schools among the rural population. They say that no practical training is given to their children. They feel that the teaching is aimed to prepare their children for high schools and colleges only, where only a very small percentage ever go. For instance, the Minnesota Department of Education reports for 1915–16 that approximately 70 per cent of the country children do not go beyond the elementary grades. Only 5,532 out of 215,427 children in rural schools graduated from the eighth grade for the year. Those who do enter high schools, and, later, colleges, are indeed lost to the rural population, for the college-trained boys and girls seldom return to the soil. The children who do not enter high school remain on the farms, but they have secured almost no practical training for rural life, either as farmers or farm laborers. Instead, they have been prepared for high school.
The school program was especially sharply criticized by the Russian sectarian peasants at Glendale, Arizona. "Why, the school is making out of our children dancers and soldiers of war, instead of farmers—soldiers of the soil!" exclaimed a gray-headed "prophet" in disgust. Another peasant, perhaps not so high in the sectarian hierarchy, wanted the school to teach their boys how to run and repair automobiles and tractors.
The observations and inquiries of the writer led him to the conclusion that the criticism of the school program by various elements of the rural population is justified to a large extent. The school program at present generally prevailing offers little practical training for farmers' boys and girls. A native farmer in New Jersey explained to the writer: "There is no use keeping my children in school after they have acquired knowledge of reading and writing. They grow and learn more on my farm than in the school, for I want them to become land tillers and cattle raisers." This is perhaps an exaggerated and overdrawn statement, but, nevertheless, the present rural public-school program works in favor of the city at the expense of the rural communities.
Up to recent years the prevailing teaching language in the public schools has been English, but in a number of the public schools in the immigrant rural sections the teaching language has been German. This is true in the states of Nebraska and North Dakota. A prominent church head informed the writer that there are at least half a dozen schools in McIntosh County, North Dakota, paid for by the money of the state, under the direction of the County Superintendent of Schools, in which the entire teaching is in German.
The writer found still more numerous cases where a foreign tongue was a subject of study in the elementary public school, though English was the teaching language. Both a foreign tongue as the teaching language and a foreign tongue as a subject of study in the elementary public schools are now done away with under the pressure of public sentiment against these practices.
NEED FOR EXPERT ADMINISTRATION
The limitations to efficient rural-school administration are many. According to a recent bulletin of the United States Bureau of Education [49] in more than half of the states the county superintendents are elected by the people, and in the remaining states they are either elected or appointed by county boards, county courts, state boards, state Commissioner of Education, Governor, president of township boards, district boards of education, city or town boards, township directors, parish boards, local school boards, or union boards.
In the majority of cases the parents control the local school inspection and direction. Such democratic control would be desirable provided the parents were as enlightened and expert in school training and education problems in general as school-teachers and their inspectors and superintendents. As a matter of fact, the parents, especially in the rural districts, are quite backward, and often even ignorant, in these problems. This is the root of the trouble with the local school inspection and direction. A county superintendent is not always elected for his merits as an educator, but often for his popularity, influence, and "agreeableness." An elected county superintendent usually cannot come into conflict with the parents—for instance, by insisting on a rigid enforcement of the school-attendance law entailing the arrest of the parents for disobeying the law—without losing his position at the next election. This condition causes frequent change or "rotation" of the county school superintendents, and is in itself a considerable defect of the existing system of school inspection and direction. With a few exceptions, county superintendents who were interviewed complained of this "rotation" to the writer.