The Evolution of the Country Community / A Study in Religious Sociology

by Warren H. Wilson

It is the boast of the people of the country school district that their school has "sent out" so many people of distinction. On a rocky hillside in a New England town there stands, between a wooded slope and a swamp, an unpainted school building. Within and without it is more forbidding than the average stable in that farming region. But the resident of that neighborhood boasts of the number of distinguished persons who have gone forth from the community, under the influence of that school. This is characteristic of country places and country schools. The influence of the school, so far as it has any, is that of disloyalty to the neighborhood. It robs the neighborhood of leadership. It does nothing to cultivate a spirit of sympathy with the life that must be lived there. For every one whom it starts upon the exodus to other places it leaves two at home uninspired, indifferent and mentally degenerate.

Another fault of the one-room country school, which makes it a weak support of the country community, is its lack of professional support. Among four hundred teachers in such schools, throughout the country, not one in a hundred expects to remain as a country schoolteacher for a lifetime. There is no professional class devoted to the country school. Its service is incidental in the lives of men devoted to something else. It is a mere side issue.

Besides, its building is inadequate. Too many needs, impossible to satisfy, are assembled in a single room. Too many grades must be taught there for any one child to receive the intense impression necessary for his education.

The third great fault of the country school is its total lack of intelligent understanding of the country. Its teaching is suited to prepare men for trade, but not for agriculture. Instead of making farmers of the sons of farmers, the majority of whom should expect to follow the profession of their fathers, the country school prepares them for buying and selling, for calculation and for store keeping. It starts the stream of country boys in the direction of the village store, the end of which is the department store or clerical occupation in a great city.

The improvement of the one-room rural school is possible within narrow limits only. A recent book[33] gives most sympathetic attention to this problem of improvement, while asserting that reorganization alone will be adequate to the situation. But there are improvements which, within the limitations of the one-room school, are possible. The supervision of these schools may be made closer and more efficient. By bringing to bear upon them the oversight of experts in education the grade of teaching may be elevated. The important principle is to discover the proper unit of supervision. The town is too small and the county unit too large. It is probable that with some rearrangement the county can be made the proper unit of supervision, but the school should determine its problems on a principle independent of political divisions. The first need of the country school at the present time is to be adapted, by such supervision of the district as shall correlate the country school with the units of population resident in the country. In some places the district to be supervised by one superintendent should be not much larger than a township, in other places it might approach the bounds of a county, but in all instances the supervising officer should have the relation of an employed expert to the problems of the country. It is not enough that untrained farmers or tradesmen occasionally visit the school in an indifferent manner. Their indifference is the natural attitude of men untrained in the task assigned to them. The officer who supervises should be well adapted to his task and should visit with frequency, criticize with trained intelligence, and train his teachers in a constructive educational policy suitable to the district.

Another improvement in rural schools may be had in a better normal training of the teachers. At the present time the normal schools are inadequate to the task of supplying teachers and beyond the supplying of teachers for the city, they stop short. The training of teachers for country schools must become a part of the normal provision for the states.

The minimum salary for teachers is a most important consideration. A primary difficulty in the present situation is that the country school teacher is ill paid. It is therefore impossible to secure and to retain in the country persons of adequate mental and cultural value. In order to secure funds for better payment of teachers, a readjustment of the taxation in the various states is probably necessary, but this will be slow of accomplishment. Some results may be effected in another way by a minimum salary for teachers throughout the State. In this manner a better grade of teachers can be secured for all schools.

The most important improvement, however, in the country schools is almost impossible in the one-room school. It is the teaching of the gospel of the land. Out around the country school lies the open book of nature. First of books the pupils should learn to read the book of nature. The life of the birds and animals, so familiar to the children yet so little known; the growth of plants, their beauty and their use, and the nature, the tillage and the maintenance of the soil, are all lessons easy to impart to those who are themselves instructed, yet the present system of shifting teachers makes such instruction impossible. It is the opinion of expert educators that the study of agriculture is impossible in the one-room country school. With this opinion the writer agrees, yet so great is the necessity of this very improvement and so slow will be the changes which look to consolidation of schools, that effort should be made at once by those in charge of the country school to teach the children the lesson of the soil, of plant life, of animal and bird life and of the world about them. These lessons are necessary to their economic success. They are the very beginning of their happiness in the country and of love for the country. In teaching them the country school can best perform its duty to the present generation.

The centralizing of country schools is the adequate solution of the present situation. By this means the children from a wide area are brought to a modern school building suitably placed in the country. When necessary they are transported to and from the schools in wagons hired for that purpose, in charge of reliable drivers. In this consolidated school building, which has taken the place of three, five or even seven one-room district schools now abandoned, there shall be at least two and it may be five teachers. This group of teachers forms a permanent nucleus and a center for the life of the country. The children are assembled in a sufficient number to provide a large group, and their social life is enjoyable as well as mentally stimulating. The weaknesses of the one-room district school are in this institution corrected. There is permanence in the teaching force, professional service, cumulative influence, and the interests of the community find in the school a loyal center of discussion. The consolidated rural school is an institution for the first time adequate to the task of building up the whole population.

The first use to which the centralized rural school is adapted is to halt the exodus from the country. The country community has now no check upon the departure of its best people. The sifting of the country community is done, not by the community itself, but by outside forces, unfriendly and unintelligent as to the interests of the country. The centralized rural school will retain in the country those who should be interested in the country community. This will be accomplished by the study of agriculture, which can adequately be taught only in a graded school in the country. But much can be done even by the supply of an adequate system of education in the country community.