Farm Boys and Girls

by William A. McKeever

It is a well-known fact that rural life conditions have been changing rapidly within the past decade or more. It has taken us a long while to get away from the thought that the farmer is to be anything other than merely a plain, coarse man, comparatively uneducated and innocent of the ways of the world. But we are at last seeing the light in respect to this and many another such traditional belief of a menacing nature. We are now looking forward expectantly to the time when the rural community shall contain its proportionate share of people educated or cultured in the full sense of either of these words.

Changes in rural school conditions

Many of those now in middle life can easily remember when the farmer boy was sent to school only during the time when his services were not required for the performance of the work about the field and the home. This period was narrowed down to about three months in the year. After the corn was husked in the fall, he entered school, usually about December first. And at the first sign of spring, about March first, he was called away to begin preparations for the new season’s crop. During these sixty days, more or less, the growing lad was supposed to pick up the rudiments of learning and by the time maturity was reached to have worked himself out of the ranks of the illiterate. So he did, for he learned to read falteringly, to write a scrawling hand, and to solve a few arithmetical problems.

We observe the new order of things. In practically all the states there have been recently enacted laws requiring every normal child to attend school during the entire term and to continue for a period of seven or eight years. The splendid results of this provision have only begun to be apparent, but another decade will reveal them in large proportions. Back of this new legislation in behalf of the boys and girls is the new ideal of the possibilities and the worth of the ordinary human being. We are just beginning to understand this splendid truth; namely, that with very few exceptions all of our new-born young have latent within them all the aptitudes necessary for the development of beautiful and symmetrical character. The modern ideal of public education recognizes two things: first, the right of the child to the fullest possible development; and second, the duty of society to see that the child receive such training whether the parent may wish to accord it to him or not.

The author is especially desirous that the reader appreciate the situation sketched in the foregoing paragraph. What does it mean? It means that our children are at last to have more nearly equal opportunities of development, that their worthy aptitudes or traits are to be brought out through instruction and made to do service in the construction of a sterling character. It means that we shall have cultured artisans as well as cultured artists; that the plain man behind the plow or in the workshop shall be capable of thinking the big, inspiring thoughts as well as the little, puny ones. It means that there will spring up everywhere among the ranks of those once regarded as low and coarse, a magnificent society of men and women who, as individuals, will feel and realize a secret sense of power and worth, and who will shine in the light of a new inspiration.

The boy a bundle of possibilities

It has been proved beyond question that the ordinary child contains at birth potentialities of development far greater in amount and variety than any amount of schooling can ever bring into full realization. If you will make a list of one hundred different and highly specialized vocations, and pause for a moment to contemplate the matter, you will doubtless agree that any common boy might be so trained as to some degree in any one of the hundred that he might be made to do fairly well in several of them; and that he might become an expert in at least one of them.

Plate XXVII.