The country school has shared in the enlargement of interest and is undergoing many radical changes in its spirit, its teaching, its relationships to the neighborhood and the world outside.
While in former times the country child went to school only when not needed at home and received through the year an intermittent schooling, amounting in all to but few weeks a year, compulsory education laws in the majority of states have prolonged the period which he now actually spends in school, and subsidies in state aid for longer terms have lengthened the season through which the school is in operation.
The new emphasis on country life is a transforming effect on the country school, "the ragged beggar sunning" is being replaced by a modern building planned according to state regulations, with regard to comfort and convenience, seats and lighting are seriously considered and the individual drinking cup adds the last touch of modernity.
It is changing its teaching as carefully. The leaders in country school work are striving to give a standing to country service, to reshape it to new country conditions and connect its work very definitely with the neighborhood in which it is placed.
In Minnesota there are three types of rural schools. The first of these is the one-room, one-teacher school in an isolated community where every grade is represented and all subjects taught. The second type is the associated school where several districts have connected themselves with a town school, where the pupils of high school age are received on the same term as their town cousins, and the one-room schools continue the work with the lower grades in the country but under the supervision of the central school. The third is the consolidated school where a number of districts have combined and established in a town, village or open country a modern school for the grades and high school, transporting to it all the children within the radius of five miles.
In all of these schools, the old course of study is adapted to include health instruction, nature study or agriculture, some manual training, sewing and cooking. The high school training departments and the normal schools are making all haste to prepare teachers to fulfill the new requirements while the teachers already at work must bring themselves up to grade at the summer schools. The practical subjects make a strong appeal. A country teacher at the summer school was heard to remark that "the rope-tying lessons were awfully interesting and the course in agriculture was just grand."
As a help in the new order of things a strong school library is needed more than ever. Even in the smallest school there is indeed a collection of books known as the school library, the heritage of the years. These show no design in selection further than meeting the state aid requirement of the expenditure of a certain amount of money every year for library books. The trail of the book agent is over them all: witness the sets; Motley—"History of the United Netherlands," Grote—"History of Greece," Gibbon—"Rome," and such subscription books as "Lights and shadows of a missionary's life" and "The Johnstown flood."
The erstwhile teachers and their interests have left an impress; the correspondence courses which they pursued while teaching are reflected in such books as Hamerton—"Intellectual life"; "The literature of the age of Elizabeth"; and all the Epochs, and Eras and Periods in which they delved for credits; their faith bears witness in the "Life of Luther" found in every school library in one western county and their hopes in "How to be happy tho' married," common in another.
The average number of volumes in each school is impressive in reports, but inspection of the libraries too often shows that the majority of the books are entirely useless in connection with the school work and quite beyond the grasp and interest of the pupils who may be typified by little moon-faced Celestia who trudges two miles through the pine forest to the little log schoolhouse and to whom an illustrated book is a revelation of worlds unknown; Anna, eleven years old, who at the time of our visit was doing the work of the household and caring for her mother and the new baby brother before she came to school, for in this county the size of the state of Connecticut there are but five doctors and fewer nurses; Mary, aged 13, who keeps house for an older brother and his logging "crew" of four grown men; and little Irven, 7 years old, who reads so fast the words can hardly come and who is willing and eager to aver in round childish scribble that his favorite books are "Seven little sisters," Eskimo stories and Fairy stories and fables.
However hard to realize, the needs are simple to state; better books and direction in their use.