An attractive rural schoolhouse was erected some years ago at the New York State College of Agriculture, to serve as a suggestion architecturally and otherwise to rural districts. It is a one-teacher building, and yet allows for the introduction of the new methods of teaching. It is a wooden building, with cement stucco interior, heated with hot-air furnace, and with two water toilets attached. The total cost was about $2000. The College writes as follows of the house:—
“The prevailing rural schoolhouse is a building in which pupils sit to study books. It ought to be a room in which pupils do personal work with both hands and mind. The essential feature of this new schoolhouse, therefore, is a workroom. This room occupies one-third of the floor space. Perhaps it would be better if it occupied two-thirds of the floor space. If the building is large enough, however, the two kinds of work could change places in this schoolhouse.
“The building is designed for twenty-five pupils in the main room. The folding doors and windows in the partition enable one teacher to manage both rooms.
“It has been the purpose to make the main part of the building about the size of the average rural schoolhouse, and then to add the workroom as a wing or projection. Such a room could be added to existing school buildings; or, in districts in which the building is now too large, one part of the room could be partitioned off as a workroom.
“It is the purpose, also, to make this building artistic, attractive, and homelike to children, sanitary, comfortable, and durable. The cement-plaster exterior is handsomer and warmer than wood, and on expanded metal lath it is durable. The interior of this building is very attractive. Nearly any rural schoolhouse can secure a water-supply and instal toilets as part of the school building.
“The openings between schoolroom and workroom are fitted with glazed swing sash and folding doors, so that the rooms may be used either singly or together, as desired.
“The workroom has a bay-window facing south and filled with shelves for plants. Slate blackboards of standard school heights fill the spaces about the rooms between doors and windows. The building is heated by hot air; vent flues of adequate sizes are also provided so that the rooms are ventilated.
“On the front of the building, and adding materially to its picturesque appearance, is a roomy veranda with simple square posts, from which entrance is made directly into the combined vestibule and coatroom and from this again by two doors into the schoolroom.”
Help make a school play ground
Throughout the entire country there is at last rising a wave of enthusiasm in behalf of affording the child a better means of play. First the cities took the matter up, then the towns, and now the country districts are beginning to do their part. The farmer and his wife should feel an interest in such a matter, for they can render no better service to their community than that of joining the district teacher in an effort to equip the school grounds with play apparatus. As a suggestive outline of what materials to procure, the dimensions and cost of the same, there is given below the equipment worked out by certain officials in Colorado and described briefly in Superintendent Fairchild’s report, as follows:—