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

by Warren H. Wilson

At Rock Creek, Illinois, the retirement of farmers to the cities and towns had gone so far in 1905 that the intelligent and devoted members of the community, who did not desire to leave the place where their grandfathers had first broken the prairie sod, took counsel as to the welfare of the community. The superficial fact of most consequence was the presence of tenant farmers in the community. These tenants, however desirable personally as neighbors, were of a short term of residence. From one to five years was their longest term on one farm. The social life of the community and its religious interests were beginning to suffer. The sons of the early settlers, therefore, laid their plans by which to control the selection of tenants.

Their first plan was to form a farmer's union or syndicate, which should undertake to run the farms of those who were retiring from the land. This plan seemed promising and the makers of it congratulated themselves upon controlling the future of the community. But reflection showed that this method would have the effect of retiring more farmers from the land and turning over the hiring of tenants to the few remaining loyal owners, who would come in a short time to constitute the local real estate agencies; while the majority of the owners would enjoy themselves in towns and villages round about.

The result was that the farmers undertook not to control the tenancy, but to build up the community itself. They deliberately undertook the reconstruction of the schools. Three school districts were merged in one. An adequate building in which a group of teachers is employed was erected. The children are transported in wagons hired for that purpose. The grounds about the school building are made pleasant; and the school, located near the manse and the church which had most influenced the change, forms now a strong community center for a wide region.

The result is all that could be desired. The retirement from the farms has been checked; the neighborhood has become specially desirable for residence. Farmers who had gone to the town find now that as good or better schools are to be had in the community where their property lies and where they pay their taxes. The rental price of land has increased and it is difficult for tenants to come into the community unless they are willing to pay an added rental in return for better school privileges. The whole countryside has received an impetus and the depression of country life has for this community departed. Mr. R. E. Bone, "the fourth red-headed Presbyterian elder Bone in the Rock Creek Church," takes great pride in the building up of the community which has been effected through the consolidated school.

A more mature example is the John Swaney Consolidated School in Illinois. Here the leadership and generosity of John Swaney, a member of the Society of Friends, have effected the consolidation of four school districts at a point two miles from the village of McNab. This purely rural consolidation was not effected without a contest. Indeed the McNab school has had to fight for the gains it has made from the very beginning. The school-house stands by the roadside, not even surrounded by a group of residences. The grounds are peculiarly beautiful, being shaded by great trees and extending in ample lawn about the building. In the rear are stables for the horses which transport the children daily from the outer bounds of the consolidated district.

The school building contains four class-rooms with physical and chemical laboratories. In one room are apparatus for cooking and sewing. In the basement is a well-lighted shop where benches for manual training are placed at the use of the boys. In the third story is an auditorium so ample as to accommodate a basket-ball game and about two hundred spectators. Frequent gatherings occur here in a simple spontaneous way. This common school has all the social and intellectual power of the old-fashioned country academy which once was so useful in the Eastern States. A principal and four women teachers form the faculty of the John Swaney school. The number of scholars in 1910 was one hundred and five, the number of boys slightly exceeding that of girls. Of these about half were in the primary and the grammar grades and about half in the high school. Of the latter some twenty-five were tuition pupils from outside of the district, so that the actual school group of the McNab consolidated school, the children of the tax-payers, was in that year eighty in number.

The difference between the social life of eighty young people and eight or eighteen young people, which one may find in a one-room school in the country anywhere, is very great. Needless to say that the John Swaney school has athletic teams, tennis tournament, baseball games, literary and debating contests and is a strong aggressive force lending life and vitality to the whole countryside. The older families of the neighborhood are Quakers. The newer half of the population is of Germanic stock. The influence of the school is upon all its pupils. The high school retains practically all the sons of the Quaker families and some of the newer population whose interest in education is less.

But the crowning distinction of the John Swaney school is in its study of agriculture, or broadly speaking in its industrial training. For with agriculture must be classed manual training and domestic science. By John Swaney's generosity twenty acres of land were presented to the State for an experiment farm. This land adjoins the school grounds and a regular part of the curriculum for the young men is the study of agriculture. The result of this interpretation of country life in forms of scholarship is that substantially all the graduates of the high school annually go to the State University for training in scientific agriculture, expecting to return to the farms and become rural residents of Illinois. At the present time no more profitable training could be given these young men and women. But aside from this economic consideration, the social and moral value to the community in the return of these young men and women to their own soil and the scenes of their childhood is beyond estimation. The Quaker Meeting in this community is not "laid down;" the church is not abandoned. Indeed all the activities of the community are built up and the best of the community perpetuated through the medium of this modern consolidated school.

To sum up this chapter, the improvement of the one-room common schools is possible, but for the satisfaction of the needs of the modern country community that improvement is inadequate. The one-room country school is an institution which in itself cannot be made to minister to modern community life. It is simple and modern life is complete. It is casual and irregular while the forces with which it has to deal are steady-going and cumulative in their power. It is inexpert and served by no specialized professional class, while modern life calls for the service of experts in every direction. It has no social value, while modern life is always social in its forms of action and requires social interpretation for its best effects.

A closing word should be said for a type of schools which has been perfected in Denmark. They are known as the "Folk High Schools." These are popular schools, adapted to the teaching of adults to get a living. Denmark has an adequate supply of technical schools, and these latter are not established to train scholars or scientists. Their use is to fit men and women to meet the issues of life, at home, hand in hand, with skill and enthusiasm. They use few text-books and have no examinations, and six months are sufficient for a course of study. The schools are religious and their foundation was the work of Rev. N. F. S. Grundtvig. In songs and in patriotic exercises, all their own, they idealize country life and the work of the mechanic.