New Ideals in Rural Schools

Hygiene and health. Since health is at the basis of all success and happiness, nothing can be more important in the education of the child than the subject of practical hygiene. It has been the custom in our schools until recently, however, to give the child a difficult and uninteresting text book dealing with physiology and anatomy, but containing almost nothing on hygiene and the laws of health.

Not only should the course in physiology emphasize the laws of hygiene, but this hygiene should in part have particular bearing on right living under the conditions imposed by the farm. Food, its variety, adaptability, and preparation; clothing for the different seasons; work, recreation, and play; care of the eyes and teeth; bathing; the ventilation of the home, and especially of sleeping-rooms; the effects of tobacco and cigarettes in checking growth and reducing efficiency; the more simple and obvious facts bearing on the relation of bacteria to the growth, preparation, and spoiling of foods; the means to be taken to prevent bacterial contagion of diseases,—these are some of the practical matters that every child should know as a result of his study of physiology and hygiene.

But we must go one step further still. It is not enough to teach these things as matters of abstract theory or truth. Plenty of people know better hygiene than they are practicing. The subject must be presented so concretely and effectively and be supported by such incentives that it will actually lead to better habits of living—that it will result in higher physical efficiency.

Agriculture. Agriculture is of course preeminently a subject for the rural school. Not only is it of immediate and direct practical importance, but it is coming to be looked upon as so useful a cultural study that it is being introduced into many city schools.

It has been objected that agriculture as a science cannot be taught in the elementary school because of the lack of age and development of the pupils. This is true, but neither can any other subject be taught to children of this age as a complete science. It is possible, however, to give children in the rural elementary school much useful information concerning agriculture. Perhaps better still, it is possible to develop a scientific attitude and interest that will lead to further study of the subject in the high school or agricultural college, and that will in the mean-time serve to attach the boys and girls to the farm.

The rural school pupils can be made familiar with the best modes of planting and cultivating the various crops, and with the diseases and insect enemies which threaten them; the selection of seed; the rotation of crops, and many other practical things applying directly to their home life. School gardens of vegetables and flowers constitute another center of interest and information, and serve to unite the school and the home.

Similarly the animal life of the farm can be studied, and a knowledge gained of the best varieties of farm stock, their breeding and care. Insects and bird life can be observed, and their part in the growth or destruction of crops understood. All this is not only practicable, but necessary as part of the rural school curriculum. Anything less than this amount of practical agriculture leaves the rural school in some degree short of fulfilling its function.

Domestic science and manual training. In general what is true of agriculture is true of domestic science and manual training. They can be presented in the elementary school only in the most concrete and applied form. But they can be successfully presented in this form, and must be if the rural school child is to have an equal opportunity with the town and city child. The girls can be taught the art of sewing, cooking, and serving, if only the necessary equipment and instruction are available. They are ready to learn, the subject-matter is adapted to their age and understanding, and nothing could be more vital to their interests and welfare.

Likewise the boys can be taught the use of tools, the value and finishing of different kinds of woods, and can develop no little skill with their hands, while they are at the same time receiving mental development and the cultivation of practical interests from this line of work. It is not in the least a question of the readiness of the boys to take up and profit by this subject, but is only a matter of equipment and teaching.

Music and art. Nor should the finer aspects of culture be left out of the education of the country child. He will learn music as readily as the city child, and love it not less. Indeed, he needs it even more as a part of his schooling, since the opportunities to hear and enjoy music are always at hand in the city, and nearly always lacking in the country. The child should be taught to sing and at least to understand and appreciate music of worthy type.

The same principle will apply to art. The great masterpieces of painting and sculpture have as much of beauty and inspiration in them as the great masterpieces of literature. Yet most rural children complete their schooling hardly having seen in the schoolroom a worthy copy of a great picture, and much less have they been taught the significance of great works of art or been led to appreciate and love them.

Physical training. It has been argued by many that the rural child has enough exercise and hence does not need physical training. But this position entirely misconceives the purpose of physical training. One may have plenty of exercise, even too much exercise, without securing a well-balanced physical development. Indeed, certain forms of farm work done by children are often so severe a tax on their strength that a corrective exercise is necessary in order to save stooped forms, curved spines, and hollow chests. Furthermore, the farm child, lacking the opportunities of the city child for gaining social ease and control, needs the development that comes from physical training to give poise, ease of bearing, and grace of movement.

Nor must the athletic phase of physical training be overlooked. While it is undoubtedly true that athletics have come to occupy too large a part of the time and absorb too great a proportion of the interest in many schools, yet this is no reason for omitting avocational training wholly from the rural school. Children require the training and development that come from games and play quite as much as they need that coming from work. The school owes a duty to the avocational side of life as well as to the vocational.

The curriculum here proposed is so much broader and richer than that now offered in the rural district school that it will appear to many to be visionary and impossible. That it is impossible for the old type of rural school will be readily admitted. But it is entirely practicable and possible in the reorganized consolidated school, and is being successfully presented, in its general aspects, at least, in many of these schools. It is only such an education as every rural child is entitled to, and is no more than the urban child is already receiving in the better class of town and city elementary schools. If the rural school cannot give the farm child an elementary education approximating the one out-lined, it has no claim on his loyalty or time; and he should in justice to himself be taken where he can receive a worthy education, even if he is thereby lost to the farm.

But the rural boy and girl need not only a good elementary education, but a high school education as well. Let us next consider the rural high school curriculum.

The rural high school curriculum

This section is presented in the full knowledge that comparatively few localities have as yet established the rural high school. It now forms, however, an integral part of the consolidated rural school in not a few places, and is abundantly justifying the expenditure made upon it. In other localities the tendency is growing to send the rural child to the town high school, or even for the family to move to town to secure high schooling for the children. In still other cases, and we are obliged to admit that these yet constitute the rule rather than the exception, the farm boy or girl has no opportunity for a high school education.

If we succeed in working out the so-called rural problem of our country, in maintaining a high standard of agricultural population and rural life, the rural high school must be an important factor in our problem. For the children of our farms need and must have an education reaching beyond that of the elementary school. And this schooling must prepare them to find the most satisfactory and successful type of life on the farm, instead of drawing them away from the farm.

It goes without saying that the rural high school should be an agricultural high school. This does not mean that it shall devote itself exclusively to teaching agriculture; but rather that, while it offers a broad range of culture and information, it shall emphasize those phases of subject-matter that will best fit into the interests and activities of farm life, instead of those phases that tend to lead toward the city or the market-place. Its four years of work must be fully equal to that of the best town or city high schools, but must in some degree be different work. It must result in efficiency, and efficiency here must relate itself to agricultural life and pursuits.

A detailed discussion of the rural high school curriculum will not be required. The principles already suggested as applying to the elementary school will govern here as well. The studies must cultivate breadth of view and a wide range of interests, and must at the same time bear upon the immediate life and experience of the pupils. The lines of study begun in the elementary school will be continued, with the purpose of securing deeper insight, more detailed knowledge, and greater independence of judgment and action.

English should form an important part of the curriculum, with the double aim of securing facility in the use of the mother tongue and of developing a love for its literature. The rural high school graduate should be able to write English correctly as to spelling, punctuation, and grammar; he should be able to express himself effectively, either in writing, conversation, or the more formal speech of the rostrum. Above all, he should be an enthusiastic and discriminating reader, with a catholicity of taste and interest that will lead him beyond the agricultural journal and newspaper, important as these are, to the works of fiction, material and social science, travel and biography, current magazines and journals, and whatever else belongs to the intellectual life of an intelligent, educated man of affairs.

This is asking more than is being accomplished at present by the course in English in the town high school, but not more than is easily within the range of possibility. The average high school graduate of to-day cannot always spell and punctuate correctly, and commonly cannot write well even an ordinary business letter; nor, it must be feared, has his study of literature had a very great influence in developing him into a good reader of worthy books.

But all this can be remedied by vitalizing the teaching of the mother tongue; by lessening the proportion of time and emphasis placed upon critical analysis and technical literary criticism, and increasing that given to the drill and practice that alone can make sure of the fundamentals of spelling, punctuation, and the common forms of composition emphasized by all; and by the sympathetic, enthusiastic teaching of good literature adapted to the age and interests of the pupils from the standpoint of synthetic appreciation and enjoyment, rather than from the standpoint of mechanical analysis.

The rural high school course in social science should be broad and thorough. The course in history should not give an undue proportion of time to ancient and medieval history, nor to war and politics. Emphasis should be placed on the social, industrial, and economic phases of human development in modern times and in our own country.

Political economy should form an important branch. Especially should it deal with the problems of production, distribution, and consumption as they relate to agriculture. Matters of finance, taxation, and investment, while resting on general principles, should be applied to the problems of the farm. Nor should the economic basis of support and expenditure in the home be overlooked.

The course in civics should not only present the general theory of government, but should apply concretely to the civic relations and duties of a rural population. Especially should it appeal to the civic conscience and sense of responsibility which we need among our rural people to make the country an antidote to the political corruption of the city.

Material science should constitute an important section of the rural high school curriculum. Not only does its study afford one of the best means of mental development, but the subject-matter of science has a very direct bearing on the life and industries of the farm. To achieve the best results, however, the science taught must be presented from the concrete and applied point of view rather than from the abstract and general. This does not mean that a hodge-podge of unrelated facts shall be taught in the place of science; indeed, such a method would defeat the whole purpose of the course. It means, however, that the general laws and principles of science shall be carried out to their practical bearing on the problems of the home and the farm, and not be left just as general laws or abstract principles unapplied.

The botany and zoölogy of the rural high school will, of course, have a strong agricultural trend. It will sacrifice the old logical classifications and study of generic types of animals and plants for the more interesting and useful study of the fauna and flora of the locality. The various farm crops, their weed enemies, the helpful and harmful insects and birds, the animal life of the barnyard, horticulture and floriculture, and the elements of bacteriology, will constitute important elements in the course.

The course in physics will develop the general principles of the subject, and will then apply these principles to the machinery of the farm, to the heating, lighting, and ventilation of houses, to the drainage of soil, the plumbing of buildings, and a hundred other practical problems bearing on the life of the farm. Chemistry will be taught as related to the home, foods, soils, and crops. A concrete geology will lead to a better understanding of soils, building materials, and drainage. Physiology and hygiene will seek as their aim longer life and higher personal efficiency.

The course in agriculture, whether presented separately or in conjunction with botany and zoölogy, must be comprehensive and thorough. Not only should it give a complete and practical knowledge of the selection of seed; the planting, cultivating, and harvesting of crops; the improvement and conservation of the soil; the breeding and care of stock, etc., but it must serve to create and develop a scientific attitude toward farming. The farmer should come to look upon his work as offering the largest opportunities for the employment of technical knowledge, judgment, and skill. That such an attitude will yield large returns in success is attested by many farmers to-day who are applying scientific methods to their work.

Manual training and domestic science should receive especial emphasis in the rural high school. Both subjects have undoubted educational value in themselves, and their practical value and importance to those looking forward to farm life can hardly be over-estimated. And in these as in other subjects, the course offered will need to be modified from that of the city school in order to meet the requirements of the particular problems to which the knowledge and training secured are to be applied.

Mathematics should form a part of the rural high school curriculum, but the traditional courses in algebra and geometry do not meet the need. The ideal course would probably be a skillful combination of algebra, geometry, and trigonometry occupying the time of one or two years, and applied directly to the problems of mechanics, measurements, surveying, engineering, and building on the farm. Such an idea is not new, and textbooks are now under way providing material for such a course.

In addition, there should be a thorough course in practical business arithmetic. By this is not meant the abstract, analytical matter so often taught as high school arithmetic, but concrete and applied commercial and industrial arithmetic, with particular reference to farm problems. In connection with this subject should be given a course in household accounts, and book-keeping, including commercial forms and commercial law.

It is doubtful whether foreign language has any place in the rural high school. If offered at all, it should be only in high schools strong enough to offer parallel courses for election, and should never displace the subjects lying closer to the interests and needs of the students.

The study of music and art begun in the elementary school should be continued in the high school, and a love for the beautiful cultivated not only by the matter taught, but also by the æsthetic qualities of the school buildings and grounds and their decoration. On the practical sides these subjects will reach out to the beautifying of the farm homes and the life they shelter.

When a well-taught curriculum of some such scope of elementary and high school work as that suggested is as freely available to the farm child as his school is available to the city child, will the country boys and girls have a fair chance for education. And when this comes about, the greatest single obstacle to keeping our young people on the farm will have been removed.

IV

THE TEACHING OF THE RURAL SCHOOL

The importance of teaching

Teaching is the fundamental purpose for which the school is run. Taxes are levied and collected, buildings erected and equipped, and curriculum organized solely that teaching may go on. Children are clothed and fed and sent to school instead of being put at work in order that they may be taught. The school is classified into grades, programs are arranged, and regulations are enforced only to make teaching possible. Normal schools are established, teachers are trained, and certificates required in order that teaching may be more efficient.

The teacher confronts a great task. On the one hand are the children, ignorant, immature, and undeveloped. In them lie ready to be called forth all the powers and capacities that will characterize their fully ripened manhood and womanhood. Given the right stimulus and direction, these powers will grow into splendid strength and capacity; lacking this stimulus and guidance, the powers are left crippled and incomplete.

On the other hand is the subject-matter of education, the heritage of culture which has been accumulating through the ages. In the slow process of human experience, running through countless generations, men have made their discoveries in the fields of mathematics and science; they have lived great events and achievements which have become history; they have developed the social institutions which we call the State, the church, the home, and the school; they have organized great industries and carried on complex vocations; they have crystallized their ideals, their hopes, and their aspirations in literature; and have with brush and chisel expressed in art their concepts of truth and beauty. The best of all this human experience we have collected in what we call a curriculum, and placed it before the child for him to master, as the generations before him have mastered it in their common lives. For only in this way can the child come into full possession of his powers, and set them at work in a fruitful way in accomplishing his own life-purpose.

It is the function of the teacher, therefore, to stand as an intermediary, as an interpreter, between the child and this great mass of subject-matter that lies ready for him to learn. The race has lived its thousands or millions of years; the individual lives but a few score. What former generations took centuries to work out the child can spend only a few months or a few years upon. Hence he must waste no time and opportunity; he must make no false step in his learning, for he cannot in his short life retrieve his mistakes. It is the work of the teacher, through instruction and guidance, that is, through teaching, to save the child time in his learning and development, and to make sure that he does not lose his opportunity. And this is a great responsibility.

Thus the teacher confronts a problem that has two great factors, the child and the subject-matter. He must have a knowledge of both these factors if his work is to be effective; for he cannot teach matter that he does not know, and neither can he teach a person whose nature he does not understand. But in addition to a knowledge of these factors, the teacher must also master a technique of instruction, he must train himself in the art of teaching.

The teacher must know the child. It has been a rather common impression that if one knows a certain field of subject-matter, he will surely be able to teach it to others. But nothing could be further from the truth than such an assumption. Indeed, it is proverbial that the great specialists are the most wretched teachers of their subjects. The nature of the child's mental powers, the order of their unfoldment, the evolution of his interests, the incentives that appeal to him, the danger points in both his intellectual and his moral development,—these and many other things about child nature the intelligent teacher must clearly understand.

And the teacher of the younger children needs this knowledge even more than the teacher of older ones. For the earlier years of the child's schooling are the most important years. It is at this time that he lays the foundation for all later learning, that he forms his habits of study and his attitude toward education, and that his life is given the bent for all its later development. Nothing can be more irrational, therefore, than to put the most untrained and inexperienced teachers in charge of the younger children. The fallacious notion that "anyone can teach little children" has borne tragic fruit in the stagnation and mediocrity of many lives whose powers were capable of great achievements.

The teacher must know the subject-matter. The blind cannot successfully lead the blind. One whose grasp of a subject extends only to the simplest rudiments cannot teach these rudiments. He who has never himself explored a field can hardly guide others through that field; at least, progress through the field will be at the cost of great waste of time and failure to grasp the significance or beauty of what the field contains.

Expressed more concretely, it is impossible to transplant arithmetic, or geography, or history, or anything else that one would teach, immediately from the textbook into the mind of the child. The subject must first come to be very fully and completely a true possession of the teacher. The successful teacher must also know vastly more of a subject than he is required to teach. For only then has he freedom; only then has he outlook and perspective; only then can he teach the subject, and not some particular textbook; only then can he inspire others to effort and achievement through his own mastery and interest. Enthusiasm is caught and not taught.

The teacher must know the technique of instruction. For teaching is an art, based upon scientific principles and requiring practice to secure skill. One of the greatest tasks of the teacher is to psychologize the subject-matter for his pupils,—that is, so to select, organize, and present it that the child's mind naturally and easily grasps and appropriates it. Teaching, when it has become an art, which is to say, when the teacher has become an artist, is one of the most highly skilled vocations. It is as much more difficult than medicine as the human mind is more baffling than the human body; it is as much more difficult than preaching as the child is harder to comprehend and guide than the adult; it is as much more difficult than the law as life is more complex than logic.