Class U 6 1$ h y Book.. t &5t GopigM? COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT: Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/countryschoolstu01seer THE COUNTRY SCHOOL THE COUNTRY SCHOOL A STUDY OF ITS FOUNDATIONS, RELATIONS, DEVELOPMENTS, ACTIVITIES, AND POSSIBILITIES BY HOMER H. SEERLEY PRESIDENT OF IOWA STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1913 L-- Copyright, 1913, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS ©CU33084I ' ' ' FIRST WORDS There are few modern educational discussions that have reached such proportions and have de- veloped such a diversity of conclusions as have those that have attempted the problems of the country school. College education is simple com- pared to the education that deals with the instruc- tion and the training of the masses. To secure the solution of college problems the best-trained minds of the generation have given time, thought, and investigation. As a result, definite organiza- tion has been secured, notable standardization has resulted, and the profession of educators has been recognized. In this field are found the higher salaries, the greater emoluments, and the most attractive distinctions. Whenever men conclude to make education a career they naturally prepare for some specific department of higher education, as they readily conclude that there is enough of sacrifice, of lack of recognition, and of limited ser- vice in this more honored and better esteemed field of public activity. vi FIRST WORDS These conditions have left the greater problems of popular education in the hands of public officials and teachers who have but short, indeterminate, changeable terms of public service, and have made the whole organization and management tentative and evolutionary. Such individuals as short-term legislators, limited-service State superintendents of public instruction, temporary "county superin- tendents, short-time boards of examiners for teachers' certificates, and three-year members of school boards control the destinies, decide the policies, determine the expenditures, and regulate the standards that such huge efforts represent. Most of the improvement plans which have been formulated have appeared in the form of recom- mendations to legislatures by State superintend- ents or in the form of resolutions adopted by State and national teachers' associations, repre- senting the stand-points of administration, of expediency, and of modification rather than the stand-points of social efficiency and of actual capability for the masses. These pages have been written by one who ar- rived at the opinions here presented by actual ex- perience with the life of the farm through all its varied hardships, pleasures, struggles, and sue- FIRST WORDS vii cesses. The country school was his educational institution during his elementary school-days. Its vantage-ground as a place for effective work, its field of opportunity for the largest and most suc- cessful usefulness to society, its remarkable chance for the greatest results that any kind of educational endeavor can give, are well known to him through an accurate acquaintance with the men and women of the farm. They possess a competency in doing things that is unusual, they have a reliability that cannot be appreciated until it is tested, and they have a sanity of view in regard to public affairs that has made them progressive and self-reliant. Three years' work as a teacher in these country schools renewed his experience with the boys and girls of the farm and confirmed his former opinion that they were, as a class, of superior quality, char- acter, and disposition. Of his many years of ex- perience, none gave him more assurance of the future prospects, or of the earnest sincerity, or of the superb willingness to realize the best things of life than did the boys and girls that were his pupils in those remarkably interesting winter terms. The school-day was never too long, the tasks assigned were never too heavy, and the re- quirements of the school management were never viii FIRST WORDS too exacting not to receive their co-operation, their commendation, and their sympathy. In one of these schools it seemed necessary to the teacher to have at least two night sessions a week to ac- complish the work as planned for the older pupils in order to give them the opportunities actually needed. At every such special session they were regularly in attendance and even seemed to equal the teacher in ambition, industry, and zeal. Later it became his privilege to conduct teachers' in- stitutes and have experience with the corps of country teachers of a whole county. They were chiefly country bred and country educated. They displayed an interest, an application, and a spirit of improvement during those ten years of consecu- tive instructing in the same county that established their place as workers for the common good to the very highest degree of admiration. This opinion has been confirmed by twenty-five years of addi- tional administrative experience in a teachers' training school, where country boys and girls in great numbers have studied to become country teachers. They are the salt of the earth. They de- serve every opportunity that civilization can con- fer. The nation, the State, and the county should combine to enlarge the province of the elementary FIRST WORDS ix school in order to train the masses for an intelli- gent and a productive citizenship. With these great facts in mind, with an ambition to contribute some valuable notions that may better the pros- pects of elementary education, with a hope of helping the country people, their children, and their teachers to appreciate more fully their rights and their privileges, these chapters on funda- mental problems of public education are respect- fully submitted. Homer H. Seerley. Iowa State Teachers College, Cedar Falls, Iowa, December 10, 191 2. CONTENTS I. THE COUNTRY COMMUNITY PAGE Advantages and disadvantages of country life ... 3 Factors that make for the welfare of the community 4 The school district the unit of school management 4-5 Responsibilities of the electors in school district . 5-6 The school board and its duties 6 The patrons and the importance of their rights and duties 7 Importance of making pupils understand that schools are for preparation for life 7-8 The teacher and his qualifications 8-9 Harmony of effort necessary to produce good schools 9 II. THE COUNTRY SCHOOL Distinctive marks of country school 10 Importance of country school in the community . . 10-1 1 Part played by the practical in country school . . II-12 Importance of adapting country school to the needs of country people 12-13 Intellectual culture important in country school . 13-14 Importance to child of habits of industry .... 14-15 III. COUNTRY LIFE Characteristics of country life 16-17 Value of experience as a teacher 17-18 Importance to children of sharing in home work . 18-19 Necessity of gratifying social needs 19-20 Rights of the young 20 IV. WHAT EDUCATION CAN DO What education means 21-22 Character the most important product of education 22 xi xii CONTENTS Page Importance of success in school work 23-24 Value of social element in school 24-25 Country environment best under normal conditions 25-26 V. THE ORGANIZATION OF THE SCHOOL Keeping records of pupils' work 27-28 Necessity of examining pupils at beginning of each term 28-29 Reading and arithmetic the basic subjects for classification 29-30 Classification more important than grading in coun- try school 30 Seats should be assigned by teacher according to a definite plan 30-31 Miscellaneous arrangements should be systematized by teacher 31-32 Stimulation of work and rousing of interest the end of organization 32 VI. THE SCHOOL HOUSE AND GROUNDS Needs of present-day country school 33—34 Country school-house must be adequate to meet de- mands of modern education 34—35 Country school-house must be large enough to be used for lyceums, farmers' meetings, lecture courses, etc 35—36 Importance of best modern equipment for heating, lighting, and sanitation 36 Equipment for shop work, cooking, sewing, etc. . . 36-37 Importance of instruction in agriculture .... 37-38 VII. THE ORGANIZATION OF A COUNTRY COMMUNITY Importance of organization to success in public af- fairs 39 Management of school building and equipment, the business of the school board 39-4° CONTENTS xiii PAGE A literary club of great value in the community . 40-41 Importance of a science club to the community . . 41-42 Importance of a singing club to the community . . 42 A woman's club a source of profit and pleasure . . 42-43 Miscellaneous activities that contribute to the in- terest and good of the community 43 - 44 Value of friendly competition 44 VIII. THE PROGRAMME Importance of a programme 45 A proper schedule considers the laws of mental en- durance and mental activity 45~46 Importance of understanding the order of develop- ment of child's mind 46 What this order is 46 Difference between perceptions and conceptions . . 46-47 Memory, imagination, and judgment 46-47 Reasoning 48 Character of teaching determined by order of child's development 48 The most difficult work should come when mental energy is at its height 49 Only the most concrete and graphic types of arith- metic should be taught in the lower grades . . 49-50 Work must be adapted to the age and development of pupil 50 Algebra adapted to a higher mental development than arithmetic 50 Need of modifying daily plan of teaching to suit the mental condition of pupil 50-51 Six hours with two recess periods of fifteen minutes each the usual school day. 51 Two hours in morning and two in afternoon prob- ably enough work for average child .... 51-52 Best to have recitations of good length 52 Importance of variations of programme .... 52 Proposed general programme of recitation .... 53 Importance of arranging oral lessons and written lessons on alternate days 53—54 xiv CONTENTS PAGE Importance of independent night work for advanced students 54 Information studies best adapted to outside work . 54 IX. MANAGEMENT Necessity for definite aims on part of teacher . . . 55-56 Laws of school binding on teacher as well as on pupil 56 Importance of teacher's manner and spirit in school 56-57 Characteristics of good management 57~59 Ways in which the skill of teacher shows itself . . 59-60 Importance of finding dominant intellectual interest of community 60-61 X. SCHOOL GOVERNMENT Character of government of school depends on cir- cumstances 62-63 No standard of perfect conduct for children . . . 63-64 Need for eternal vigilance on part of teacher . . . 64-65 Personal influence and popular control of teacher qualities of most permanent value .... 65 School government extremely complex 65-66 The moral factor the most important influence affect- ing school government 66-67 The intellectual factor concerns chiefly the official re- lations of teacher and pupils 67 Government by mere authority less efficacious than that based on moral and intellectual elements 67-68 Force to be used only as a last resort . . . . . 68-70 XL TACTICS Importance of a simple system of tactics .... 71-72 Usefulness the test of any system of tactics ... 72 Systems for opening and closing school 72-73 Suppressive discipline to be avoided as not training in self-control 73~74 School-room routine should be conducted quietly . 74~75 Importance of relieving monotony in school-room . 75 Rigid forms of discipline to be avoided 75-77 CONTENTS xv XII. EXAMINATIONS PAGE Examinations properly given of great value . . . 78-80 Nature of examination must vary according to cir- cumstances and conditions 80-81 Aim of examination to test results 81-82 Frequency of examinations differs according to subject 82 Three chief objects of examinations 83-84 Importance of patience and deliberation in conduct- ing examinations 84-85 XIII. STUDY Importance of proper lesson assignments .... 86-87 Importance of assisting pupil to prepare lessons . 87-89 Open book lessons best way to teach pupils how to study 90 What values of study depend on 91 XIV. THE RECITATION The object of the recitation 92-93 Class instruction most economical method in schools 94 Value of the recitation beyond question .... 94~95 No definite form of conducting recitation to be recommended 95~9^ Set recitation plans to be avoided ...... 96 Tricks often practised on the teacher 97 A combination of oral and written methods the best recitation plan 98-99 XV. THE COMMONER The teacher a part of the machinery of the school system 100 Importance of teacher's cultivating the good will of the community 100-101 The school once a private institution now controlled by the public 101-102 Province of education of higher rank than most pub- lic undertakings 103 xvi CONTENTS PAGE Importance of cultivating the masses in a democracy 103-104 Fellowship the source of influence in both teacher and pupil 104-105 Important for teacher to co-operate in every move- ment for community good 105-106 Need for business judgment as well as professional knowledge and skill on part of teacher . . . 106-107 XVI. THE YOUNG PEOPLE Conditions for normal life most favorable in country 108-109 Importance of recreation and entertainment for young people . . 109-110 Importance of playgrounds 110-111 Making the school a social centre 1 1 1 Necessity of organizing recreation activities of school 1 1 1-1 1 2 Importance of clubs and libraries 1 1 2-1 13 XVII. SUPERVISION No real supervision of country schools 114 Good accomplished by county superintendency . . 11 4-1 15 Need of better supervision 11 5-1 16 Need for men teachers 116-117 Large opportunities of district superintendent . . 117-118 Educational organization — size of the task . . . 11 8-1 19 The place of the expert 1 19-120 XVIII. THE PLACE OF RECREATION Human life a unity 121-122 Importance of organizing play 122-123 Value of recreation 123-124 Importance of making school work enjoyable . . 124-125 Real province of education 125-126 XIX. TAXATION AND THE STATE The business problem of the country school ... 127 The part played by the State 127-128 CONTENTS xvii PAGE Success of State subsidy educational work . . . . 129-130 Importance of inspection and supervision .... 129-130 Need for better teachers 130-131 Importance of stimulating local interest and devel- oping local initiative 131-132 XX. THE DEMONSTRATION SCHOOL To win the approval of the masses educational work must stand the test of experience 133-134 The country school stands where it stood fifty years ago . . . 134 Independent district control of schools a bar to im- provement 134-135 Importance of State co-operation with district . . 136 Need for higher standards for teacher's licenses . . 137 Necessity for demonstration schools 137 XXI. CO-OPERATION Importance of co-operation to country communities 139-140 Narrowness of the country dweller 140-141 Differences between country and town life . . . 141-142 Progress in country schools chiefly dependent on broadening of experience of community . . . 143-144 Necessity for enlarging the unit of school organi- zation 144-145 Co-operation the key to advancement to all lines of effort 145 XXII. THE PROPER UNIT IN SCHOOL ORGANIZATION Proper unit in school organization varies according to circumstances 146 Country school districts often over-organized . . . 146-147 The county the best taxing unit to give proper finan- cial support . 148 Importance of inspection, supervision, and expert management 148-149 xviii CONTENTS PAGE Size of community unit dependent on means of communication 150 Solution of country school problem largely a matter of business adjustment 150-151 XXIII. STANDARDIZATION Strong sentiment for standardization of schools . 152 Schools now standardized from lowest grades through- out high schools 153-154 Impossibility of hitherto standardizing country schools 154 Great influence of teacher in country school . . . 155-156 Necessity for reasonable standardization of country school 156 Popular misconceptions of education 157-158 XXIV. THE COURSE OF STUDY Educational ideals of various peoples 1 59-161 Function of country school only partly realized . . 162 Present courses of study reflect public needs . . . 163-164 Difficulty of securing competent teachers at the low salaries available 164-165 Training in English language first result to be sought 165 Difficulties of teaching English . ....... 165-166 Success in other branches largely dependent on teaching of English 167-168 Importance of arithmetic 168-170 Thinking in abstract relations not natural to the child mind 170-171 Value of information subjects such as geography and history 171-172 XXV. THE TEACHER SUPPLY Too many school districts under present system . 173 Schools should be so conducted as to bring best re- turns 173 School money often wasted 174 CONTENTS xix PAGE Best kind of teacher for country school .... 174-175 Special efforts needed to train teachers for country schools 175-176 Need of country teachers' courses in high schools . 176 Kind of training needed by teacher 177-178 Importance of actual training in country school work 179 Opportunities for high schools to do normal school work 179-180 Importance of teachers' institutes and reading circles 180 XXVI. AGRICULTURE Development of curriculum 181-182 Vocational studies 182-183 Purpose of manual training 1 83 Agriculture in the country school 184 The demands of agriculture on the student . . . 184-185 What agricultural study includes H 185-187 Importance of co-operation between the school and the home 187-188 Education a preparation for real present-day living 188 XXVII. HAPPINESS Happiness of body, mind, and spirit the'chief end of human attainment 189 Equality of ability among men not desirable . . 190 Education gives each individual the opportunity to make the best of himself 191-192 Selfishness the greatest source of unhappiness . . 193-194 The final aim of education personal character . . 195-196 XXVIII. CONDITIONS AND PROSPECTS Rise in price of land has made much farming un- profitable ' 197 Educational problems complicated by advance in cost of living 198 Shortage of labor and rise in wages unfavorable to success of farm life 199 xx CONTENTS PAGE Prosperity of agricultural districts injured by land speculation 199 Progress of schools hindered by increase in number of tenant farmers 199-200 Progress of schools dependent on social and financial conditions 200 Progress of country schools prevented by social de- terioration 201-202 Value of State aid in improving country schools . 202-203 The problem of the country school social rather than pedagogical 204 XXIX. FINAL WORDS Limited character of present discussion .... 206 Country schools neglected because of interest in business 206-207 Great progress made in other educational fields . 207-208 Importance of instruction in qualities necessary to adapt man to present age 208 Too much reliance on laws for remedying evils . . 209 More should be left to discretion of school officers 210 The spirit the important thing in education . . . 210-21 1 Index 213 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL THE COUNTRY SCHOOL THE COUNTRY COMMUNITY Characteristics. — There are characteristics in environment that have a marked effect upon the life, the employments, the ideals, the standards, and the characters of the people that have normal and natural surroundings. The country has its blessings, its benefits, and its helpfulness that de- serve to be appreciated, and it has likewise its restrictions, its limitations, and its hindrances that must be overcome. What any single country community has become has depended entirely upon the energy, the intellectuality, and the morality of its people. What results have come to the youth that have been brought up in any such community has depended upon the opportunities conferred, the privileges granted, the social training imposed, and the standards of living exacted. The country can be better than the town in its ideals, in its notions of outcome of effort, and in its conceptions of things to be undertaken, because its population is much more homogeneous in accomplishments, 3 4 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL much more uniform in prosperity, and much more equal in opportunities to get ahead in the world than are the populations of the city or the town. Factors. — When progress, development, and wel- fare are to be considered as the necessary heritage of any community, then the recognition must be reached that there are several factors concerned and that all of them must contribute their pro- portion of effort, wisdom, time, or money for the public good. Social life is therefore organized as to territory included, as to authority conferred upon those who have the right to decide, as to the officials that are appointed to carry out the public will, as to the co-operation of those to be bene- fited, and as to the service of those who are to be employed to secure the ends desired by this public combination of effort. These factors are always important, always necessary, always reliable, and always effective. The School District. — The unit of school man- agement in a local sense consists of a school dis- trict. This territory is so organized and set apart because the people who live therein have known common interests, and therefore should have the spirit of co-operation. The school district in pop- ular government is a large factor in deciding what shall constitute the standards and the undertak- ings in education. The people need to be wide THE COUNTRY COMMUNITY 5 awake to every interest that contributes to the welfare of the whole community, and, since hap- piness, usefulness, and prosperity depend very largely upon intelligence, morals, and culture, it becomes a matter of self-preservation to have good schools. In the United States public-school edu- cation is commonly left to the local community, and experience has proved that this plan is wise and good if the people recognize the value and the importance of education to society as a whole and to individuals in particular. The Electors. — Each school district has a system of political management whereby an annual meet- ing of electors is held in order to vote for school officers, called directors or members of the school board, and to decide other matters of business that are authorized by law. The persons who have the right to vote on these questions are called electors. The qualifications exacted by law are the same as are required of all voters at the general national and State elections. These electors have large responsibilities that are not always appreci- ated or realized, as it is made their duty to select for members of the school board the kind of per- sons that are qualified in spirit and in training to properly and successfully conduct the schools. Much of the success or the failure that is to fol- low in the school work is a consequence of the 6 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL prudence or carelessness, and the conscientiousness or indifference, in the exercise of this right of suf- frage by these electors. These voters need to keep closely in touch with what is being done in the schools: they should know whether good, strong teachers are employed; they should be acquainted with the spirit and enthusiasm of the manage- ment; and they should ascertain what could be made still better if they are to fulfil completely the function of their patriotic service as citizens. The School Board. — The school board consists of representative citizens who are selected by the electors to conduct the school, because they are recognized as worthy of such trust and are sup- posed to be competent to so conduct the under- taking as to give the necessary returns for the in- vestment made in the money of the tax-payers and in the time of the children who attend the school. These school directors or committeemen are the agents of the people of the community and are not supposed to consult their own inter- ests or their own needs. They are to regard the welfare of all and hence must recognize duty as paramount to pleasure and good schools as the aim of their ultimate endeavor. The only basis of economy that they are authorized to enforce is that kind of liberal investment that gives the youth the best opportunities of the present age. THE COUNTRY COMMUNITY 7 The Patrons. — The people who have children to send to school, and who give them the privilege of education, constitute the patrons. They may or may not be tax-payers, they may or may not be electors, they may or may not have a knowledge of what education should be, they may or may not be competent to decide the important problems to be solved, yet they all have rights, duties, and re- sponsibilities that are necessary to be exercised by them if they are to receive the full opportunity of patrons while they have a claim for fair dealing, for helpful consideration, and for recognition as citizens that should never be overlooked by those in authority. The comprehension of these rela- tionships on the part of all concerned will go far toward establishing conditions that make good schools a genuine possibility. The Pupils. — There is a province of education that belongs exclusively to those for whom the school is organized and conducted. It must never be forgotten that civilization has founded schools for the sole benefit of the children and youth that are soon to assume the difficult responsibilities of citizenship, and that there would be no need for such an institution in society if there were no children and youth. As soon as the early years have passed, so that discretion permits a reasonable recognition of personal responsibility, that soon 8 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL it should be established in the minds of all pu- pils that a beneficent civilization has provided all these advantages and opportunities as a free gift for their preparation and training for a successful career in after life. Too frequently the pupils have wrong views of the object of the school; too commonly they assume that all this organized effort is to discipline and coerce them instead of benevolently to help them; and too generally they put their strength and their capability in opposi- tion to the great plans that have been created for their development and efficiency in order that they may defeat the object and the purpose of all this endeavor. The Teacher. — The last factor in the commu- nity that has a large part in educational endeavor is the teacher, the active personality that is se- cured by the school board to carry out the aims and the wishes of the community. This person is selected because he represents that he has the qualifications that the work of teaching children and youth demands. He is supposed to have the necessary scholarship, the real personality, the ac- quired training, the magnanimity of spirit, the knowledge of human nature, the qualities of self- control, and the capability of instruction that such a calling as teaching exacts. All the other things are preliminary to this contact of the teacher THE COUNTRY COMMUNITY 9 with the pupils, all the other factors are co-opera- tors, the teacher is the constructor and the creator of what is regarded as success in educational work. He is the living personality that inspires enthusiasm, that compels love to be given, and that arouses activity of intellect and emotion to succeed in the joint undertaking that pupils and teachers are united in accomplishing. The Harmony of Work. — The community can only secure these results by a development of harmony and co-operation. All the factors in- volved must be of one mind and one heart. There can be no prosperous school unless there is peace and union of effort among all concerned, and a decisive endeavor that seeks the largest returns with the least expenditure. To this end all must labor, all must sacrifice, all must yield, all must hope. There can be no division of sentiment, there can be no lack of confidence and faith, there can be no conflict of authority, there can be no doubt of intentions, if the good of the community is to be secured and the plan of society for its amelioration and prosperity is to be consistently developed and realized. II THE COUNTRY SCHOOL The Distinctive Mark. — There is no cause for any apology for the necessary peculiarities of the country school. It is what it is, and it can be what it can be, because of these very individual char- acteristics that are sometimes unnecessarily de- plored by those who do not recognize the effi- ciency and the strength of its position as a factor in civilization. The distinctive mark of a coun- try school is its normal and natural environment. It has thus far escaped the devitalizing influences that the artificial and the conventional can pro- duce. It is strictly original in its characteristics and decidedly individual in its work and its de- velopment. Its strength lies in its closeness to nature, in its practical relation to the every-day occupations of every one, and in its possibilities for simplicity, sincerity, and sanity. The char- acter of its applications is always thoroughly prac- tical, and the development of its training is always efficient and result-giving. No Second Place. — Its province and opportu- nity is not that of subordination or inferiority, but 10 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 11 of co-ordination with actual life and superiority in its privileges and its opportunities. Its pupils are particularly blessed by the things that they do not know ahead of their time as much as they are by the things they do know about earning a living and about occupying their time in useful activities. The custom of being assigned some regular part of the work of the home and of the farm for which to be responsible is permitted the country child early in his development. Such training in ser- vice for the good of the family interests without individual remuneration is extremely valuable, as it teaches co-operation rather than selfishness, and altruism rather than individualism. The country school has thereby a first place in the community, as it is recognized as being one of the greater un- dertakings of the people as a whole. The Province of the Practical. — In no other school does the practical hold so large a place or receive as ready a response from its pupils. This is due to the fact that they are prepared by home training and by the necessities surrounding their lives to place a right valuation upon the kinds of culture and of preparation that make them ser- viceable representatives in society. To them, everybody should be an industrious contributor to the common good as well as to his own personal prosperity, and hence they accept the practical 12 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL in their training as natural and appropriate as well as essential. The very occupations in which they are engaged require a study in an elementary way of many arts and sciences and continually emphasize with them the necessity of more knowl- edge and more applications of judgment. The kind of information and scholarship in which they are most interested is not the speculative nor the literary because the necessities they are compelled to meet demand practical aims and immediate results. This kind of knowledge may not con- stitute a part of the programme of studies of the college or the university, nor of the standard liter- ary high school, but it is of larger importance to the industrial classes of the people than the knowl- edge that such institutions are founded to give. Knowledge is not to be condemned because it is speculative and professional any more than be- cause it is practical and usable, but it is always necessary to recognize that each kind of knowledge has its place and its utility in the civilization of the world. The Adaptation to the Life of the People. — Edu- cation conducted by the people for the benefit of the people always consists of an adaptation to the persons being educated so that they are being pre- pared to become more and more effective in their happiness and their prosperity. The work of the THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 13 farmer cannot be successfully compared as to im- portance with that of the merchant or the law- yer, because there is a lack of sufficient similarity. Each of them is necessary to civilization and each has a province to fulfil that cannot be omitted and civilization be complete. Special education is now recognized as a sensible solution of the training of the varieties of talent that exists in the masses. Most individuals could succeed in several occupations, since application, study, and fidelity would enable them to secure creditable re- sults in either one of these they may select, but the average person has not time enough to follow to much advantage several occupations to which he may be adapted by interest and by qualifications. Hence, most persons wisely select some one call- ing to which they devote their time, their thought, and their endeavor. By so doing they succeed in making comfortable livings and in developing creditable reputations. Hence, country-school ed- ucation should glory in country life, country occu- pations, and country possibilities because there are no opportunities offered a youth that guarantee as much average prosperity, as much average comfort, and as much average chance for reason- able success and happiness. The Need for Intellectual Culture. — While adaptability to the practical is essential in country- 14 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL school education, yet in planning to accept such a conclusion there is no need to deprive such pupils of intellectual culture equivalent to that given city pupils. Country pupils are as capable of learning history, science, mathematics, music, and art as are city pupils. They have just as much hunger for the intellectual and the instructional, for the profound and the philosophical, for the national and the world type, for the artistic and the sub- lime, because their world of experience is even broader and deeper and more normal than the majority of those that live among the experiences that are man-made and thereby conventional and artificial. Because the practical, the expedient, and the temporary are always present and always needing attention, their capability for language, literature, politics, society, or the fine arts is not thereby limited. In fact, the very limitations that the common life of the country pupils seems to possess are the very reasons that cause them to leave their environment and enter upon activities that bring actual greatness and real distinction. The Importance of the Habit of Industry. — Of all the fortunate experience that can come to a child's early life, the habit of industry is of the greatest lasting importance. Its application to every phase of business and of enterprise is self- evident. To have learned to work and to enjoy THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 15 work, to have acquired a feeling of dissatisfaction with idleness and indifference, to have attained to a condition where definite results are neces- sary to happiness and contentment, is a state of mind and personal being that defines opportunity as success and possibility as reality. One of the saddest experiences that many healthy children suffer is that of not having an opportunity for a normal response to their natural want for produc- tive occupation. This want is fully supplied in country life. There is work suitable to the power and the strength of the youngest pupils, there is abundant opportunity for them to engage in pro- ductive activities, there are privileges to use judg- ment and to practise experiments, there is chance to study and to invent, there is abundance of ser- vice for initiative and for testing to the fullest ex- tent, and hence energy is used in sensible ways and skill is trained to a wonderful extent, while character is developed and personality is ex- panded. The marvellousness of these things is easily realized by those whose pupils have had such training and such experiences. Ill COUNTRY LIFE Characteristics. — Country life is specially strong in things utilitarian. It is equally strong in types that are physical and experimental, as such life gives opportunities to test everything and come to conclusions by synthetic processes, so that such persons have natural daily training in inductive reasoning. This is more or less empirical and may be lacking in enough varieties of examples, but the experience obtained from year to year has the effect of modifying conclusions reached too hastily and gradually gives a body of knowledge that is extremely valuable to the possessor in his after studies in secondary school and college. The edu- cation thus obtained is broader in many respects than is sometimes realized because the persons who attempt to investigate frequently have nei- ther knowledge nor experience to do justice by such acquirements. In the country vocational training includes the elements of agriculture, horti- culture, stock-breeding, grain and stock judging, soil-judging, the use of fertilizers, buying and sell- ing the products of the farm, garden, dairy, poul- 16 COUNTRY LIFE 17 try yard, and other resources, exchanging products in the general store or in the grocery for family supplies, and numerous other kinds of business like the handling of tools, skill in using farm ma- chinery, economy in the care of all things be- longing to the family, and many other activities that cannot here be enumerated but all of which contribute largely to the benefit of boys and girls that are thus environed by the strange things of nature and the urgent demands of labor. Benefits of Experience. — There is no kind of teaching more effective than experience. In this respect the country children are happily blessed by everything that attracts them and their inter- ests. They learn about the birds and the beasts and their habits and relations to each other and to the farmer. They acquire information about insects that are injurious to the garden, the stock, and the orchard, and are taught how to de- stroy them and thus protect the products of labor from damage and destruction. They are trained in the use of the implements of husbandry and obtain skill in the various occupations and indus- tries that constitute a part of their daily contribu- tion in labor for the family welfare. They learn these practical duties without knowing that they are actually receiving practical education and that they are acquiring a capability in using their 18 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL senses and their muscles as well as their judgment, because their relationship to the family as co- workers is the most effective plan of training that can be desired. Salary Not an Object. — While these things are in progress and their training is being perfected in this large and effective way, development of char- acter, of ability in industry, of love for occupation, of co-operation with others, and of respect for superiors and elders is accomplished. It is nota- bly true that children who live with and work with their fathers and mothers secure a respect and an esteem for them and for their acquirements that could never be realized without such associations and experiences. In addition to that, this working for the common good of the family without an eye to personal gain or pay for services, this recogni- tion of being a member of the family that is con- ducting this business, this knowing that in the end they will have their share of the profits and accu- mulations that the family possess, this fact that the results of success are more truly for the benefit of the children than for the older members of the family, contribute more largely to a proper training in social attitude and moral helpfulness than any other system of training can produce. This kind of appeal is more altruistic than selfish, the tie is more for the home than for other associations, COUNTRY LIFE 19 and the hope of personal prominence and distinc- tion is based more upon love and helpfulness than upon personal ambition for greatness. The Social Needs. — Country life can be barren in social opportunity and social training and hence fail in developing a balance and an equilibrium that mature life particularly needs. This condi- tion often occurs among the best people in coun- try communities and easily dissatisfies spirited young people with the kind of employment and activities that country life affords. Such a con- dition is unnecessary as well as undesirable. Such a situation should be relieved because it drives many intelligent people into cities and towns at the expense of their real prosperity, in order that they may get relief from the monotony and the tension in which they lived in the country. They sacri- fice a success that is real and an independence that is genuine to have their social hunger relieved and their opportunities for entertainment increased. To remedy such an unfortunate state of affairs as this is not impossible, to provide recreation that is wholesome and beneficial is not at all diffi- cult, while to give a social training to all is a matter that should not be overlooked by those who recognize the benefits of such experiences to happi- ness and contentment. The solution of such a mixed problem should not be postponed until 20 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL wealth is increased, until more time can be with- drawn from work without loss to business, nor un- til the older people feel a distinct need for a change in custom and in practice. The Young Have Rights. — That there are rights and duties connected with social opportunities and activities should be fully realized. One's mental condition is better when it is recognized that a human being has a social nature as well as a moral and religious nature, that his success in his career depends very much upon his whole personality being used in sane and normal ways, and that dis- use and neglect can arrest development. A fair study of human needs and possibilities will always give a more rational treatment of these conditions caused by environment. Country life can be made the most interesting and the most attractive be- cause it is the most normal and the most inde- pendent. IV WHAT EDUCATION CAN DO Definition. — Schools are organized, equipped, and conducted for the purpose of giving an oppor- tunity to secure an education. The studies, the employments, and the exercises taught in them are selected because of their assumed usefulness in producing full development, positive culture, and efficient training. The real work that the pupils do for themselves constitutes the actual benefits that are obtainable, giving the mental results that well-qualified, well-trained persons believe to be essential to the needs of modern civilization. Self- reliance, independent accomplishment, and con- tinuous application transfer ability into capability and expand the personality of the pupils so that they are greatly superior in every individual way to what they could have been had the strenuous and continuous efforts required by the school been omitted. One of the best elementary definitions for the meaning of education was given by James Sully: "In spite of ethical and theological differ- ences, it can be said that education seeks by social stimulus, guidance, and control to develop the nat- 21 22 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL ural powers of the child so as to render him able and disposed to lead a healthy, happy, and morally worthy life.' 3 ' The Conclusion. — In this definition it is posi- tively recognized that it does matter what kind of result an education gives. The character and the life of the one who has gone through the proc- esses and undergone the influences of a school should be of a decided type so far as regard for the body, the mind, or the soul is concerned. There should be no question of the physical sanity of the person as exhibited in his habits, conduct, and behavior. He should look upon his body as a sacred object that must not be debased, depraved, or destroyed by folly, by passion, or by crime. Health is of such great importance to a career, happiness of mind and heart is so dominant a force in determining the outcome, and moral worthiness is so prominent in usefulness, helpful- ness, and effectiveness that no compromise from these standards is possible. If the teacher does not find these characteristics developing in his pupils, it becomes his bounden duty to use every means within his power to bring about such changes in action and such reforms in motive that the personality and the life conform to these cor- rect standards of education. Scholarship, power, capability, and effectiveness, even when present in WHAT EDUCATION CAN DO 23 business or in profession, are nothing of value as compared to character. Ability and Disposition. — There is more ability in the human family to be good and true and honor- able than there is disposition to show these traits. There is more ability to be a scholar, to be a me- chanic, to be a public official of the highest rank and quality than there is disposition to put forth the effort and make the sacrifices that such a re- sult requires. In order to make ability into a new product, capability, there is required much en- deavor and a decidedly unrelenting spirit on the part of individuals seeking success, distinction, and recognition. Working industriously in school becomes a good habit which is a permanent ben- efit throughout all after life because the develop- ment of good habits makes after application and successive diligent purpose comparatively easy. In the same way idleness, indifference, and dila- toriness become such harmful habits that there is little hope of inducing reform for the person acquiring them, since this condition of worthless- ness and indolence becomes actually enjoyable and permanently satisfactory to him. It is for such reasons that the teacher should use every means and effort to secure for pupils success in their school work, as the success habit is a pow- erful influence in keeping application alive and 24 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL energy effective. Success, and success alone, satis- fies such as are prepared by training and by edu- cation to expect it. Failure is a negative result, which, by bad training and worse treatment, be- comes such a common experience that anything different can hardly be appreciated. The realiza- tion of one's powers, the knowledge of one's gifts, the possession of one's skill and attainments are all notable acquirements that can never be over- estimated. True teachers should never undertake to excuse themselves when they know that their pupils have tendencies and prospects that are unfortunate and unpromising. As long as the relation of teacher and pupil continues, heroic endeavors should be put forth to develop better conditions and more hopeful possibilities. The Social Side. — There is a powerful social influence developed by bringing pupils together in school and class activities. Comparison and competition are always permanent factors in en- abling more to be done than could otherwise be obtained. It is thus that social relations produce a stimulus to better efforts because a child desires to stand well in the opinion of his associates, and hence he makes the endeavor to prove his fitness for their endorsement and their compliments. By such means the well-conducted school attains a power for good and for development that may be WHAT EDUCATION CAN DO 25 overlooked. It is for this reason that good man- agement and good teaching are such paramount forces in bringing notable results. In the same way, though with different effects, the popular and successful teacher has great ability in direct- ing and controlling the pupils when at work. In the right conditions direction and control on the part of the teacher are always acceptable and ca- pable. Here is where intelligence, scholarship, knowledge of human nature, and skill as an in- structor all play a great part in bringing results that would otherwise be impossible. The social side of the school has a decisive effect in securing perfect attendance, punctuality, good lessons, and application to the tasks assigned. The Country Environment. — In the study of these things it must be recognized that the coun- try boy and girl have a great advantage provid- ing they are surrounded by normal conditions. There is, then, every reason to encourage ambi- tion, inspire enthusiasm, and cultivate prosperity, the most important factors of permanent success. Education from this stand-point is life itself and not preparation for life; it is the experience that a developing, expanding, improving personality must have, and hence it is neither artificial, im- material, nor unsatisfactory. The country school prospers when this attitude toward civilization is 26 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL comprehended and assumed, when this endeavor to accomplish is in the spirit of the people them- selves, and when teachers and study and expen- ditures in the training of youth are all assumed to be the most important investments that hu- manity can make. THE ORGANIZATION OF THE SCHOOL The Past. — Systems of keeping records of the progress of the pupils have been adopted by school superintendents and school boards in order to have the new teachers know the past attendance, progress, and success of the pupils enrolled in the schools. These records may or may not be valu- able, all depending upon the care and the capabil- ity with which they have been kept and their cor- rectness as to the condition of scholarship and attainments that the pupils have acquired. Unless these records show the exact facts they are useless to the superintendent, the school board, and even to the teacher. As it happens, there is more or less lack of interest in being exact in coming to the conclusions that are to be recorded, and equally a common disposition to be careless because the teacher assumes that these records are useless and that they are required simply to comply with law and with the regulations of the system adopted by the county superintendent or with needless re- quirements made by the school board. Even when the largest honesty has been given and the 27 28 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL greatest care has been shown, yet the information is not of a kind nor of a quality that will relieve the new teacher of the necessity of completely re- organizing and reclassifying the school. The Present. — A country school of any term is not a duplicate of either its predecessor or its suc- cessor. Its present needed work depends entirely upon the pupils now in attendance, and its pro- gramme of classes and the time that should be al- lotted are positively regulated by the size of the several classes and the kind of lessons now to be taught. Hence, a teacher must thoroughly in- vestigate the qualifications, the capabilities, and the condition of knowledge that each pupil can show. While this investigation is really an ex- amination in every line of work maintained by the school, yet it is the only true way to ascertain the kind of work at the outset that can be profitably offered to each individual pupil and the place in the work where the pupil should begin. The old- time country school of years ago started every pupil every term at the very first lesson in reading, arithmetic, grammar, geography, and history in the text-books. This was not a bad plan, if dis- cretion and judgment were carefully used, because as much progress was permitted from day to day as the present knowledge of the pupils allowed. Such a plan of reviewing the fundamentals was THE ORGANIZATION OF THE SCHOOL 29 very valuable provided the important and basic things were selected and the comprehension was taken as a guide to the teacher's assignment of the work to be done. The Basic Subjects. — In all primary classes reading constitutes the basic subject in determin- ing classification. This is due to the fact that every other subject taught to the pupils of this age and development depends for success very largely upon the ability to read. Number work, language lessons, nature studies, history and geography studies, and all other phases of information in- struction depend upon the success that the pupil has in getting knowledge from the printed page. Hence, all elementary text-books in arithmetic, science, and history are prepared as a variable kind of reading-books, in order to give the pupil the opportunity to master the art of reading. In all the more advanced classes arithmetic consti- tutes an important basic subject because there is a dependence of one part upon the part that has gone before and hence there is a regular sequence that cannot be omitted. This is not equally true with geography, history, or other in- formational studies, as the entire omission of some chapters and parts does not interfere materially with a pupil's taking up succeeding chapters or parts that occur in the text-books. For these 30 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL reasons reading and arithmetic become the basis of almost all classification that it is necessary to make in this class of schools. Grading. — Plans and systems of grading coun- try schools have been frequently recommended as being helpful in producing a more satisfactory condition of the work. For the average coun- try school classification is desirable and possible, while grading is to be considered as more theoreti- cal than practical. The advocates of grading as- sume that class instruction is superior to individual instruction, and that the so-called graded school is notably a better school than a country school. Now, grading is necessary in the crowded city school for the purpose of managing the work economically, and just for a similar reason classi- fication — the putting of each pupil in each branch of study where he belongs — is just as essential in a country school. A reasonably close classifica- tion gives all the advantages needed to both teacher and pupils, and the progress will be as rapid as the capabilities of the pupils allow. Seating. — There should be a definite plan of seating the pupils of a country school, conforming particularly to the comfort and to the convenience of all concerned — the larger pupils at the larger desks and the smaller pupils at the smaller desks, as the furniture may admit. If recitation seats THE ORGANIZATION OF THE SCHOOL 31 are provided, the assignment of the pupils on these for each class should depend upon the eyesight and the hearing, defective conditions needing to be specially favored by receiving this special atten- tion. All seating of pupils in the beginning should be temporary, so that changes may be made at any time that the teacher regards it necessary for the good of the order or work of the school. A policy of allowing pupils to feel that they have some special rights in regard to seating because they were there the earliest the first morning, or because they were located there last year, or any other plan is not desirable, because the good and the right of all should be the final basis of decision. Other Arrangements. — There are many other arrangements that the teacher should manage and control. The place where each pupil should hang his coat, the part of the cupboard in which he should place his dinner basket, the place where he should place his hat, should all be worked out in a sensible, convenient, and systematic plan. The way that pupils should make requests to withdraw from the room for cause, the plan of allowing them to get a reference book or a drink of water, the system of taking their books out of the desk to begin their work, the best method of returning these books to the desk when through using them, the order in which each pupil's books should be 32 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL placed on each other in the desk, together with all other things which are a part of good organization and of a fair and complete understanding, should be fully comprehended by those concerned. It is thus that the conduct of the school becomes simple and systematic at the very opening day, and that the teacher's executive skill and ability are recognized and accepted by all the pupils as deserving of commendation. Stimulation. — Organization has as its positive end the stimulation of the work and the arousing of interest. A school is a place for the pupils to acquire training, not to be mere absorbers of what the teacher knows. It is the nursery or laboratory where pupils are taught to do things by actually doing them, and when that is done enjoyment is the result, progress is secured, and educational efforts are rewarded. The pupils are to do the talking, the reading, the thinking, the writing, the drawing. They are to sing the songs, to recite the poems, to tell the stories, to draw the pictures, and to execute the exercises. By such means their intellectual life is strengthened, their moral life is developed, and the capability to act intelli- gently and prudently becomes what is called char- acter and personality. VI THE SCHOOL HOUSE AND GROUNDS The Needs. — The country school has changed in many important particulars in the passing of a generation because of the revolution that has come in conditions, necessities, and demands. Where these facts have been recognized and proper pro- vision made, the country school has entered upon a new chapter in history and is fulfilling its prov- ince as the handmaid of civilization. The pres- ent-day needs have made the country school- house the centre of numerous activities that must belong to the community, and for the same reason they have made the country school-grounds the demonstration garden or farm of the community. If these are not associated with the school work and the communal life, then the attempts of the school are barren of results and the efforts at ed- ucation are only partial and incomplete. These needs must be apparent to every wide-awake school district, because it is possible for a people to do as a mass what they could never accom- plish fractionally or individually. These demon- stration gardens have become a necessity for the 33 34 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL pupils, and would be helpful to all the people, be- cause they are the laboratory of the school for agricultural improvement and scientific investi- gation. In the same way the kind of school build- ing that should be provided for the use jointly of the school and of the people is a much broader and more important question than has been thus far supposed by the majority of those who deter- mine the public interests. The House.— The old-fashioned one-room school- house, limited to desks and blackboards, cupboards and heating stove, was a response to the demands of fifty years ago, but it is not at all in keeping with the progress that has been experienced on every hand in all other lines of social, intellectual, and in- dustrial activity. To-day the country school-house needs abundant room for recitation, for assembly of pupils and people, for recreation purposes for all, for laboratory work for young and mature alike, and for demonstration work in agriculture, home economics, and all lines that modern education undertakes. These opportunities must be pro- vided in order that the teaching demanded may be possible to be given and that the kind of prac- tical training requested may be able to be secured. The people must prepare their plans as large as the size of the problem to be undertaken, and they must invest in such means and privileges that the THE SCHOOL HOUSE AND GROUNDS 35 school can actually become the centre of com- munity interests, endeavors, and activities. With- out this, progress is delayed and training hindered. The Scope. — Every suitable public-school build- ing should have accommodations for the people of the school district, such rooms as will permit them to have lyceums, farmers' meetings, lecture courses, exhibits of products, and public discussion and tests of all problems that affect their work and their success. Country life to be happy and to be satisfactory must have opportunities for the social development and culture that such conveniences would provide. Such opportunities would so de- velop the kind of conditions that farming and farm life require that country life and country occupations could become more attractive, more co-operative and more successful than even city life and city occupations could be. There is no other single organized effort except the public school that can assume these proportions, and for that reason it is selected as the place where expan- sion should be made and where improvement should be realized to its fullest extent. Even if this plan requires that the school-houses should be three times as capacious as they are to-day, the investment demanded is very moderate when it is recognized that this enlarged organization gives opportunity for every kind of activity that a com- 36 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL munity needs, and at the same time unites all the people to the work of the public school so that education of the pupils is not alone the care of the teacher, but also of every individual that can con- tribute of knowledge and experience to the body of information that all should learn. The Sanitation. — This expansion of the service of the country school-house, this enlargement of its scope and of its advantages gives also abundant opportunity to provide scientifically for ventila- tion, regulated heating, pure-water supply, per- fect lighting of the rooms by suitable windows properly located, correct sanitation as to sewerage and cleanliness — in fact, all the things that are helpful to the homes as well as to the school, since the introduction of these modern notions of science into the school building will do much to educate the community to better ways of protecting life and health than are in common use. In no way can a people learn science so well as by demon- stration, and when these truths have been fully comprehended better standards will be introduced into the homes in such great measure that tuber- culosis and contagious diseases will be greatly re- duced in violence and even in possibility to exist. The Shop. — Every country school should have reasonable facilities to teach the occupations of the shop and of the home to a limited extent. THE SCHOOL HOUSE AND GROUNDS 37 Where this is properly done the larger boys and girls will not be found leaving their home school to enter the city schools, because they will see that such instruction gives competence, enlarges op- portunities to make good wages, and insures a practical training that is invaluable. Cooking, sewing, and other activities such as simple tasks in carpentry and other practical callings are never to be successfully conducted in the country schools until all these necessary equipments and facilities have been obtained and teachers are encouraged to enter upon such instruction as a regular part of the course of study. Agriculture. — When it comes to the practical instruction in farming that is necessary to a com- munity, it must be realized that it is not alone the children that are to be benefited by the instruc- tion in agriculture and related sciences that the organized work of the school undertakes to ac- complish. These things are a community afFair rather than a pupil affair and as a consequence large school grounds for demonstration work and for instruction are an absolute necessity. This conception of rural education assumes that there are large needs to be met in all these directions, and that the mothers and the fathers, the young peo- ple and the children, are all to be instructed in the things that increase prosperity, insure happiness, 38 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL and enlarge possibility. The people of the coun- try communities have great things to do, they de- serve to be given the best information and the best help that this progressive age affords, and they should have in their schools and on their dem- onstration farms the best-trained and the best- qualified persons that can be obtained. When this is done in a proper way the returns for labor will be much greater, the products marketed will be more perfect and more valuable, while the in- come from farming will be more general and more certain. There is no other occupation that re- quires a man or a woman to be more studious, be- cause there is no other occupation that has larger problems to solve. There is no other calling that requires more accurate scholarship, because the work of successful farming employs the broadest and the largest knowledge of many sciences. There is no other work that can give larger returns or that is more fundamental to civilization than that of country people, because they are notably inde- pendent, thoroughly prosperous, and absolutely competent, provided they invest largely in the things that train their minds, develop their capa- bilities, and enlarge their opportunities. VII THE ORGANIZATION OF A COUNTRY COMMUNITY Union of Effort. — The first step to progress and success in all public affairs is dependent upon proper organization and perfect co-operation. There must be union of effort in undertaking any such great movement as public education. This organization of society implies more than sup- porting the work by paying taxes, as the complete demands ask for the help of men and women as well as for the help of their money. To conduct such a great campaign as progress and improve- ment will demand calls for a very thorough or- ganization of the people, so that all the activities that should be maintained and developed may have persons selected to direct and to manage them. This plan of developing public opinion and public interest so as to get public action is the same system as that used by societies, churches, and other permanent undertakings for the public good. The School Board. — Since it is proposed to combine all these intellectual, social, moral, and industrial activities of a community with the 39 40 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL school, through holding all such meetings and con- ferences at the school building, it is self-evident that the school board will become the supervisory body that will provide the rooms, the equipment, and the general expenditures, and have control and administration of the property, whether used for one or another purpose. It will also become the business of the school board to recognize the organizations that should have these privileges, it being understood that only such organizations are legitimate as are acceptable to the people as a whole, all the meetings proposed being open to all persons of the community who may wish to at- tend. With this idea as a basis for work, it is now proposed to set out some of the organized activities that should be conducted for the benefit of the people of a good American community. The Literary Club.— This organization has its place in every school district, as it provides a means whereby the people and the pupils can hold meetings once or twice a month in which the Ly- ceum idea is dominant. The programmes should consist of addresses, essays, papers on practical subjects, debates on public questions, dramatic exercises, personal reports on conventions, and recitations and declamations. The influence of such a club is far-reaching, as it trains the people for competency and efficiency in public work. In ORGANIZATION OF A COUNTRY COMMUNITY 41 addition to that it gives results to study, read- ing, and observation that have a large educational effect upon the community as a whole. This plan gives a combination of the people without regard to age, attainments, interests, or occupation, and at the same time inspires investigation and culti- vates sympathy. The Science Club. — There is particular reason why a special organization should be formed that will have in view the progress and the improve- ments of the times. In this club, agriculture, domestic science, electricity, aviation, experimen- tal endeavors, and other live topics and discus- sions could be considered. Its officers and mem- bers should have in view the consideration of everything that contributes to the physical health, the personal happiness, or the sanitary welfare of the community. These problems studied may involve much that adds to the money value of the crops, of the dairy, of the poultry yard, and of the stock-raising, so that what may be known or learned by the more progressive and the more energetic may thus become the knowledge and the information of others with less initiative and less capability as investigators. By this kind of work the value of the farms of the community will be increased by better application, by better spirit, by better results, and by better social conditions. 42 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL The knowing how to improve appearances, how to get better fruit, how to care for trees and shrubs, and how to investigate many other important sources of information and service goes a long way toward making this world a better place for mankind. Such meetings, occurring at stated times not less than once a month, would be of growing interest and of incalculable benefit. The Singing Club. — There are always enough young people and others that like music to main- tain a club whose chief purpose will be the cul- tivating of the community in the art of song. The possibilities and accomplishments of such an organization can hardly be appreciated by com- munities where such efforts have not been tried. Even small bands, orchestras, and other musical societies can be organized in many localities, giv- ing instrumental and vocal music combined, to increase the culture and the artistic taste of the people. There is always some one who has leader- ship and personal gifts that can be found, either in the community or near at hand, who is able to develop such an organization into efficiency and helpfulness. These things are not as far away as they seem, when the will of the people is combined to get desirable results. The Women's Club. — These are the days when the women of a community are taking a large part ORGANIZATION OF A COUNTRY COMMUNITY 43 in public affairs. The women of the towns and cities have found such organizations very profit- able and very pleasant, and there is no single good reason why the women of a country community should not enjoy equal opportunities and privi- leges. In the days of the telephone, the automo- bile, the air-ship, and rural-mail delivery, there are many reasons why the women of the country should seek their own betterment and social wel- fare by securing the touch of club study and club discussion that the reorganized and enlarged edu- cational plan would give. By such a system of co-operation country life would be more agree- able to women, their burdensome duties would be much lightened by social relaxation, while their happiness and contentment would be permanently secured. Other Activities. — In addition to these things, so essential and so helpful in educational ways, there can be added courses of lectures, entertain- ments of various kinds, community concerts, so- cial meetings, political and religious meetings, or any other conferences that the people of the com- munity could agree to arrange from year to year or from time to time. In these days of the farm- ers' short courses, the agricultural-school-extension lecturers, and of commercial enterprises of such variety, there is no lack of material for such public 44 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL meetings and conferences, if they are considered desirable, with small expense to the organizations maintained. Then there could be school exhibi- tions, school concerts, dramatic entertainments, and other such activities as the more rare occasions may produce, not forgetting the annual commu- nity dinner, the school picnics, and the other pleasant affairs that are to be expected as a mat- ter of course. Competition. — These interests will have the ef- fect of developing friendly competition among the pupils of the school, among the people of the community, and among the people of two or more communities, all of which would increase in- terest, insure action, and compel better efforts for the future. There could be fairs of all kinds ar- ranged, prizes for superiority, interpretations of methods and causes that produced the best re- sults, and tests of skill and effort as to work and as to education. This co-operation could be brought to such a high grade of effectiveness that success would be honored, knowledge would be valued, and victory esteemed. It would mean a great deal to boys and girls to live in such an environment, to have the experience of such contact with their superiors, and to acquire so much of the practical and of the real as a part of every-day study, work, and entertainment. VIII THE PROGRAMME The Necessity. — It is of large importance in conducting a country school that everything have a place and a time, so that all concerned may be prepared to meet the requirements that must be imposed. A thorough understanding is a notable essential, because then system and order prevail and harmony of action becomes possible. The programme adopted must provide as much for the preparation of the work as for the recitations and other exercises that are conducted by the teacher, as the time of preparation is of equal importance to the later presentation. So far as the pupils are concerned, it can be of more importance, since it is likely to determine their progress and develop- ment. The necessity for this systematic organiza- tion will be easily recognized when it is realized that the success that is being sought depends largely upon the ultimate definiteness of manage- ment that the teacher provides. The System. — The properly prepared schedule of work is not a confused jumble of things that must be arranged without regard to suitability 45 46 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL of time or of sequence, as such a plan takes into account the laws of mental endurance and of mental activity. When this is done the energies are conserved, the right capabilities are employed, and the largest returns are received, with the least expenditure of time and effort. All these things must be considered when a programme is being constructed, since its very orderliness and its par- ticular system make the several duties more rea- sonable and more possible. The Mind. — Experience has taught that the hu- man mind has a certain order of development from infancy to maturity, and that this order must be known when the kind of work that individual pu- pils can do is decided. A proper understanding and application of the knowledge thus obtainable enables the teacher to conduct the work wisely in every sense. This order of development is as fol- lows: perception, memory, imagination, judgment, and reasoning; perceiving power appearing first in child-life, and reasoning power appearing last. By perceiving is meant the capability of the child to learn about things through the senses. The results of this mental activity are called perceptions. By memory is meant the capability of the child to re- tain the perceptions he has had so that the im- pressions he has received may be permanent and usable. Memory is of many kinds and is THE PROGRAMME 47 governed by the variety of experiences in per- ception that a child may have. By imagination is meant the capability of the child to restore to his mind impressions of objects, things, and ex- periences that he may have had. By it he de- scribes people that he has met, animals he has seen, and any other objects he has once perceived. It is this power that enables him to give reality to his reading, to his study of geography, and to any other work that deals with realities. By judgment is meant the ability of the child to construct sen- tences and express opinions about any things he has known. To do this he must have a realization of general ideas as separate from individual ideas, so that the name horse, or plant, or stone does not mean any particular horse, or plant, or stone. That is, his many perceptions must have become general notions or conceptions. This is equally true with all words that are found in the sen- tences the child writes or speaks, as judgment is a combination of these general notions, at least two such notions being necessary to the formation of a statement. To illustrate: in the sentence "Birds fly, " there are two conceptions represented by the words birds and fly, but the union of these into one sentence makes up a judgment. As judgment involves many varieties of conceptions and stand- ards of expression, this explanation deals only with 48 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL the simplest and most direct forms. By reasoning is meant the child's ability to pass from a combina- tion of statements or conclusions to a new conclu- sion of a higher grade of opinion, thus becoming capable of dealing comprehensively more and more with abstract notions of higher and higher degrees of difficulty. Education has to do with so train- ing the mental faculties that the thinking powers of the pupils become more and more serviceable in developing usable and effective conclusions. The Order. — This known order of mental de- velopment gives a key to the kind of teaching that can be done. The very youngest school children have strong perceptive powers and some little memory, with very unreliable imagination. This accounts for some of their assumed marvellous ex- periences, since what they imagine seems to them to be as true as what they perceive. Those a little older have equivalent perception, more re- liable memory, and more certain imagination, but very uncertain judgment on anything they have experienced or thought, as their touch with things has not yet trained them to have trustworthy opinions or definite conclusions. In like manner, those who are nearly mature in their mental de- velopment become capable of judging and reason- ing, as well as of perceiving, remembering, or im- agining. The efficiency of these powers depends* THE PROGRAMME 49 upon the condition of energy. Even persons of maturity, when they have their energy reduced by fatigue or by illness, become incapable of rea- soning, judging, imagining, and even remembering. This is so decidedly true that it is necessary to so carefully plan school work that those things need- ing the highest forms of mental activity be given a place on the programme when mental energy is at its best. For a similar reason the forenoon hours are more effective than the afternoon hours, and the first parts of the forenoon or afternoon ses- sions than the last parts of the same sessions. This knowledge of the order of the faculties los- ing their efficiency as mental energy declines gives a reason for the method of instruction that ought to be used as well as the method of study that can be employed in undertaking either recita- tion or preparation. What should be first in the day and what should be last in the day becomes, therefore, a matter of sensible judgment on the part of the teacher. Applications. — A few applications of these prin- ciples will assist the teacher. Arithmetic in the primary classes and arithmetic in the advanced classes cannot be one and the same in either subject matter, method of instruction, or method of study. Number work is more language than mathematics. It is for this reason that it is im- 50 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL possible to teach anything but the most concrete and the more graphic types of arithmetic in the lower grades and also why many branches of study have no place in the kindergarten or the primary age. It is also true that the teaching of any sys- tem of number or of any kind of elementary arith- metic in the lower grades can never relieve the necessity of teaching those kinds of arithmetic in the advanced grades which demand judgment and reason and the higher processes of thinking. The adaptation of the work being done for the pupil, so as to suit his age and development, is the most important thing to do in all kinds of teaching. This fact explains why algebra is adapted to the higher development of the mind, being more gen- eral and more abstract in its form of represen- tation and calculation than is arithmetic in its simpler types. It is not just another way of per- forming the same operations commonly assigned to arithmetic, since it was invented to suit the needs of higher methods of thinking and reasoning. Adaptation. — It is necessary to do the teaching from day to day, even to the same class, so as to adapt the work to the mental condition. If the mental energy is at a high grade, the plan of teach- ing may properly call into the use of the lesson the higher faculties, but if the contrary condition ex- ists the modification must be made to meet the THE PROGRAMME 51 emergency that is found. Good teaching means admirable adaptation, ready adjustment to the situation that exists, and the employment of the full capability of the pupil being instructed. It becomes necessary to know personally the pupils that are being taught to be able to measure their general and special capabilities, and thus lead them to so use their powers that they may grow in efficiency and serviceableness. The Time Element. — Custom has determined that six hours shall constitute the average school day. In these six hours there may be wisely placed two recess periods of fifteen minutes each. Some good teachers would dispense with the re- cesses as waste of time, and as contributing to dis- order, but the hygienists and the medical profes- sion uniformly approve of these brief rest and recreation periods as beneficial to the physical and mental condition of the pupils. Long school hours are not necessarily able to give decidedly larger results, because there is a limit as to time for profitable and effective study or attention. It is probable that two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon are enough of vigorous ap- plication for the average child, and that the time that is assigned beyond that does not give any appreciably better results. When long hours are required, it remains for the teacher to spend much 52 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL of the time over four hours in exercises that require little mental energy and less application. To this end the programme should give a chance for rest and for relief as well as for study and for recitation. The Model Programme. — There is no necessity of dividing the hours of the school day into as many small parts as there are distinct kinds of work to give to all the pupils of the school. In addition, it is not necessary that every subject be given a class recitation every day. In fact, where the classes are many for the number of pupils, as most country schools will show, it would be better to have each recitation of good length, even if there were only three such recitation hours a week. Then there is a possibility of doing much individ- ual work, all the time eliminating the necessity of having a recitation of a special character each day in every organized class. Schools are so individual in their needs that a programme must be made to suit the requirements of each one. There must be a specific time to study and a specific time to recite, in the regular programme. The variations necessary from day to day as to the different sec- tions can be made as the best interests require, but it becomes important that the teacher give actual attention to each section at the time stated on the programme, in so far as the necessities of each particularly require at that time. THE PROGRAMME 53 PROPOSED GENERAL PROGRAMME OF RECITATION 9.00- 9.10. Opening Exercises varied from day to day to suit the different grades of pupils. Primary Advanced 9.10-10.30. Reading and Spelling. Arithmetic. 10.30-10.45. Recess. Recess. 1 0.45-1 1.30. Numbers. Language and Spelling. 11.30-12.00. Penmanship and Penmanship and Drawing. Drawing. 12.00- 1. 00. Noon intermission; playground work. 1. 00- 1. 15. Singing and other exercises. i.l 5- 2.15. Language and Read- Geography and His- ing. tory. 2.15- 2.30. Recess. Recess. 2.30-3.30. General Exercises and Reading and Litera- Drills. ture. 3.30- 4.00. Hygiene and Health. Physiology and Hy- giene. 4.00 Dismissal. Alternation. — This programme provides for an alternation of classes, since primary and advanced grades are in the same school. The system of al- ternation allows the work to be so arranged that oral lessons and written lessons may be given on different days, thus allowing a teacher practically to have two or more sections of the school doing some kind of reciting at the same time. In addi- tion, this plan has special merit in that it gives the teacher a systematic plan of dealing fairly with 54 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL all the pupils, providing that each one gets his rea- sonable share of attention and supervision. Direc- tion, guidance, instruction, and assistance are al- ways necessary and there is no other plan that in a superior way insures economy of time, ready means to maintain discipline, and actual recogni- tion of the progress of all that belong to the school. The Study Programme. — In providing a study programme it is necessary to recognize that only certain branches, like arithmetic, geography, his- tory, and physiology, are specially benefited by study of the pupil independent of the teacher. Most advanced pupils ought to do a certain amount of night study. What this should be de- pends somewhat upon the independence of the pupils as students. It is easier as a rule to suc- ceed with information studies, like history, ge- ography and physiology, rather than with drill studies, like arithmetic and language, and hence the assignment should determine what is best in the individual case. In the primary classes the time of study should always precede the time of recitation, yet nearly all the effective work ac- complished is done when the teacher is in charge and the study or the recitation is under super- vision. Whatever plan is employed the constant attention of the teacher is required to secure efficiency in results. IX MANAGEMENT Aims. — Acceptable school management has cer- tain definite characteristics that are always pres- ent in some degree. The prudent teacher observes these things and makes their accomplishment his aim. He realizes that a prosperous school must be well managed, and that its efficiency depends upon what he can procure from the pu- pils by indirection. There is a necessity for a reasonable degree of quiet in all respects that are not a part of the school work, and therefore he endeavors to cultivate habits that will give this result without his personal supervision. There is good reason for implicit submission to the requests of the teacher, as some one must decide the ques- tions that arise as to procedure and as to pro- gramme, and consequently he adopts policies and plans that can be easily understood and readily executed. There is no way to have the work satisfactorily succeed unless all movements are orderly and comprehended, and hence he instructs the pupils in a system of tactics that make orderli- ness a custom by giving every one a place. These aims are a part of the executive work making the 55 56 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL teacher as much subject to law and to regulations as any of the pupils. For these reasons he must be particularly observant of the customs and hab- its that have been adopted, in so far as his own obedience and faithfulness are concerned. By so doing he becomes an effective example, since by his action he sincerely honors the school customs. Obedience. — Every individual in a school is subject to the rules, regulations, and plans that are adopted. The teacher will find it harder for him- self to obey these laws of the school than would be supposed, because he must be the typical repre- sentative of obedience. It is a common thing to find teachers act as if school regulations have been adopted for the pupils alone, assuming that teach- ers are really above such arbitrary control; yet the successful teacher will not ask for any such preference or consideration. He is not tardy, he is not noisy, he is not lacking in preparation of his lessons, he is not angry, he is not deceitful — be- cause he desires his pupils to be free from these bad tendencies in conduct and because he recog- nizes that he must be a living exemplar of the vir- tues and the conduct that he aims to have his pupils possess if he comprehends the value and the importance of obedience. Types. — The teacher's conduct goes farther in producing effects than would at first be realized. MANAGEMENT 57 The teacher who would have a quiet school must talk in such a moderate tone, must move about the room in such an unobtrusive manner, must so lead in the work that orderliness and quiet are sympathetically obtained and not secured by com- mand or by formal instruction. The teacher's manner has a contagious effect, if the person- ality and acceptability are such as they should be. The teacher's spirit has a marvellous influ- ence in dominating the spirit of the school, be- cause maturity, superiority, and good-nature are degrees of effectiveness that cannot be rejected or declined by impressionable persons like pupils. In attempting to improve conditions of any kind that are found in a school, the teacher must estab- lish the types that are essential to be developed and then exemplify these in every-day conduct. The Expected. — School management of a cred- itable kind is assumed by the people and the pupils as a proper part of a teacher's work. It signifies that the teacher anticipates the difficul- ties that will occur and that he prevents the nor- mal actions that would follow these results by the removal of the causes and by substituting other activities that produce the kind of results that a good school needs. It is thus that probabilities are recognized and are changed into possibilities that conform to the needs of the school work. 58 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL The characteristics of good school management are made a reality by knowing what are desirable and executively bringing them to pass. It is thus that certain phenomena are expected and sought as showing a reasonable effective normal condi- tion. Some of the things that must be realized are able to be stated in the following series of facts, that are evidence of good executive control: 1. Good management is unobtrusive and capa- ble in its forms and actions, not drawing the inter- est or the attention of the pupils away from the planned work by fixing them on the mutable con- ditions that arise and that discipline exacts. 2. Good management is of a nature that it does not occupy a large place in the gossip or the dis- cussion of the people of a community, as its spirit and its endeavors keep prominent the real things that the school represents and suppress the activi- ties that create discord and controversy. 3. Good management does not permit the em- phasis to be placed upon the authority and the legal province of the teacher, thereby constantly advertising him as a physical and personal power that must be reckoned with, if violations of rules or regulations occur. 4. Good management does not exhibit itself by methods that impress the pupils consciously that they are being directed, controlled, and restricted MANAGEMENT 59 by the will of the teacher, rather than that they are being influenced and led by the kindness and the helpfulness of the teacher. 5. Good management never absorbs the thought, the time, or the strength of the teacher in main- taining a reasonable discipline, because it so uses the capabilities of the pupils in the activities of the school that such considerations are unnecessary. The Function of Skill. — The marks of genuine skill are always accompaniments of good control and good administration. The function of skill is worthy of being comprehended since it has much to do with improvement and more to do with success. The acquiring of skill is the dominant necessity of all who essay to teach, and toward its development and its efficiency every effort should be directed. Skill is shown in the school: (1) by the work being so conducted that the energy and the self-activity of the pupils is absorbed by proper and legitimate lines of endeavor; (2) by the methods of instruction being made so interesting and so attractive that the pupils' attention is so fully occupied that no opportunity remains for other kinds of interest; (3) by the work being so varied that systematic relief is given to the com- mon monotony and tendency of school employ- ments, thus relieving fatigue and exhaustion by change of occupation at the proper time; (4) by 60 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL the teaching being made so entertaining and so pleasing that the mental faculties are constantly kept on the alert by the novelties and plans em- ployed; (5) by the lessons being so conducted that there yet remains for further study and investiga- tion on the part of the pupils much information that they can readily ascertain for themselves, and that they will desire to find out without any assist- ance; (6) by providing a condition of mind and of heart in the whole school as an organization such that sympathy aiid co-operation become large fac- tors, inspiring all to their best efforts by the cor- dial relationships that exist. The Centre of Interest. — Every school and every community has some dominant intellectual inter- est, some want that remains to be satisfied, some ideal that must be realized. To ascertain this central interest is a first consideration, because through the proper employment of this disposition toward self-activity the school becomes an agent to contribute to a realization that can be positively secured. The arousing of the intellectual powers of a pupil can easily be done whenever the teacher has discovered the pupil's centre of interest and has used this to create a desire for much differ- ent and more complex things. There is a proper trend that must be found and its aim utilized in order to enable both pupils and people fully to MANAGEMENT 61 appreciate the work that is attempted to be done by the teacher of the school. It is such organized effort as this that unites mental activity and moral purpose so that plans are carried out and inten- tions realized. The spirit of the pupils is a vital force that gives the internal impulse and expands opportunities into realizations of the greatest ser- viceableness. That teacher who works out the problem of control by indirect means has deter- mined completely the types of conduct and the directions of motive that determine educational results. X SCHOOL GOVERNMENT Individuality. — Every school, as well as every teacher, has individuality that must be taken into consideration when determining the plans and the means of governing the pupils that constitute the school. What is the most appropriate, the most sensible, or the most effective depends entirely upon the characteristics that are found and the necessities that may arise. Government is al- ways a problem of the present, not one of the past or of the future. Whether there should be any such thing in reality depends upon necessity and emergency. Common-sense is a very important factor, and its application is the most certain means of reaching a satisfactory success. To undertake to substitute rules, regulations, and mechanical agencies for common-sense and for reasonable dis- cretion is a mistaken endeavor, because there can be no uniformity in method, no general type of punishment for mistakes, and no similar cases of offence to happen. The teacher is always supe- rior personally to any code of rules and should not bind his actions, conclusions, or decisions by at- 62 SCHOOL GOVERNMENT 63 tempting to anticipate what may happen and why such conduct happens and what should be done to remedy the difficulties when they do arise. Perfection. — Conduct cannot be standardized and thus determined as to perfection so far as individuals are concerned. Children have their peculiarities, their incapabilities, and their short- comings largely because they are incomplete, im- perfect, and inexperienced, and they should be sympathetically and judiciously treated by their superiors. Perfection of conduct as to obedience, as to faithfulness, as to integrity, and as to sincerity is not to be expected of them, because they are under training and should have their ignorance removed, their lack of motive assisted, and their impulse to better things enlarged before they should be treated as offenders against the law or as deserving of physical punishment. The failure of children of public-school age to approximate in formal conduct to that assumed as right for a mature person should not discourage the teacher. Improvement in knowledge of the right, as well as in development of the strength to do right, is a constant and progressive influence on character. Justice is never the basis of adjustment of individ- ual cases, as the discipline of imperfect and unde- veloped human beings requires that training, in- struction, and guidance should be the foundation 64 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL of all improvement, while mercy and kindness should temper all efforts to seek the elimination of personal faults in either conduct or character. Vigilance. — Ideal conditions in school govern- ment are unattainable, because the immature personalities need help and guidance. They are al- ways meeting new problems in conduct, new situ- ations in experience, and new demands for addi- tional information as to right and wrong. Eternal vigilance can never be dropped by the school ad- ministrator, as there are always new causes for disorder, original opportunities to investigate the undesirable, and additional chances to test judg- ment and motive. Failure to reach expectations is common experience, evidence of disorganization and of decline of authority is a frequent occurrence, while unintentional and accidental transactions seem to possess characteristics that are intentional and carefully planned. The teacher must never depend on the interpretation of a mature mind as the right explanation for such phenomena of un- desirable and unfortunate conduct as constantly will appear in children's lives. The probabilities are that the motives may be much better than inferred and that the intention to conflict with the authority and wishes of the teacher did not exist. The task of disciplining a school is a constant yet gradual process of personal influence. It is by SCHOOL GOVERNMENT 65 slow, quiet, unobtrusive stages that progress and improvement occur. After all other things have been tried, it will be found that the personal in- fluence and popular control of the teacher are the qualities that are of most permanent value. Complexity. — School government is not a sim- ple matter, as its dealings are with many kinds of personality, at many various ages, about many types of conduct and transactions. It is not pos- sible to reduce the things that are likely to occur to distinct formulae that will serve as keys to un- lock the problems as they arise. It cannot be reduced to a system that will have definite plans to which different methods can be applied. It properly belongs to a very complex institution that is as variable as the different pupils involved, and that calls for as much consideration and dif- ferentiation as all these individual characteristics could make combinations. It becomes, therefore, impossible to know just what will be the next thing to occur or to conclude what would be the best normal solution of the difficulties involved. The Problem Stated. — The management of children in a mass depends in the main upon cer- tain characteristic phases of relationship that are found to appeal to the individual in uniform ways. These instrumentalities are effective in different degrees upon different individuals, but after all 66 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL they can be relied upon to produce certain posi- tive effects that are easily recognized. The qual- ity of these instrumentalities depends upon the efficiency in developing self-control that they produce, while their results are due to their accept- ance by the customs of society, to their adapta- bility to the spirit of the teacher, and to their satisfying the attitude of the pupils in the service of a single school conducted by a single teacher. These elements of government depend upon the grade of personal esteem possessed by the pupils, upon the individual standards of character train- ing they have reached, and upon the responsibility for success that they entertain as their part in the work the school is organized to do. The Factors Outlined. — Among all the influ- ences that effect school government the following are the more prominent: (i) the moral factor, (2) the intellectual factor, (3) the authority fac- tor, and (4) the force factor. (1) The moral factor reaches the feelings of the pupils through such characteristics as are de- veloped through personal companionship, involv- ing the spirit of the pupil toward the teacher and toward the school, seeking regularly and contin- ually the happiness and welfare of all. Here is found the personal popularity of the teacher with the pupils, including the love, respect, and esteem SCHOOL GOVERNMENT 67 that naturally exist and such general co-opera- tion, helpfulness, and affection as contribute freely to the advancement of all interests that the school's endeavor represents. It is not possible to enlarge too much upon the moral factor in seeking to im- prove the spirit and the conduct of the pupils that compose the membership of a school. (2) The intellectual factor is also a personal fac- tor to a large extent, though of minor quality as compared to the moral factor. It is more on the official side than the first, as it only exists because of the relationship provided by the organization of the school. There is less companionship, be- cause the teacher is recognized as superior in knowledge, experience, and wisdom. In such a situation excellent scholarship is influential, actual acquirements are effective, and notable wisdom and intelligence secure official respect, recognition, and confidence. (3) The authority factor may or may not be necessary. It is a complementary factor and be- comes eminently desirable when the moral factor and the intellectual factor combined are not strong enough to conduct harmoniously a school's activ- ities. Since there are teachers whose qualities in these two pre-eminent phases are not all-sufficient, it becomes necessary to hold the attention, to en- force study, and to control conduct by the use of 68 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL the authority conferred upon the teacher by law. Pupils under these circumstances do not have the most helpful atmosphere, because they obey, main- tain equilibrium, and try to accomplish their work rather than come into conflict with the teacher who is superior in physical strength and is capable by nature of enforcing the requirements that have been stated. The mere fact that freedom is re- strained, that decorum is artificial, that there is a choice between two assumed evils rather than two assumed goods makes this kind of government of lower grade than that obtained by reliance upon the feelings and the intellect. It is best to recog- nize that the persuasive tone is to be preferred to the demanding tone if it can accomplish the pur- pose and that it is harmful to constantly keep in- feriors conscious of their inferiority if real progress in self-government is to be sought. Threats, im- precations, accusations, boastful attitudes, and as- sumptions of superiority are always to be regarded as elements of inefficiency and as confessions of weakness in a teacher that even the pupils will easily recognize. (4) The force factor is still more rarely essential than the authority factor, as it belongs exclusively to those who make school work a kind of warfare rather than a kind of companionship. It is the final supplemental effort that can be employed^ SCHOOL GOVERNMENT *= 69l because if it does not secure the control necessary the teacher must retire from the school because of incapability in government. This factor appears in numerous forms and in many means and meth- ods. Its strongest type is that of corporal punish- ment, but there are other devices, such as keep- ing pupils after school hours, depriving pupils of recesses and of other privileges, that are commonly employed to enforce control. These are just as destructive of the altruistic feelings which should exist between the pupils and the teacher, and are at times even more objectionable. The more com- mon forms may be classified under reproof, deten- tion, restriction, coercion, suspension, and expul- sion. These represent many forms and have many degrees of exaction and bitterness. So far as their use is concerned, when such inflictions become necessary, the mildest type is always the best and the surest to select. All of them are advertise- ments of the admitted incompetency of the teacher to reach his aims by more successful and more hu- mane means. Young teachers of limited experi- ence may be excused for weakness in the higher lines of humane government, since their later growth and improvement will magnify the powers that are the most effective. The wise and pro- gressive teacher soon identifies the permanent and the constructive with the moral and the intel- 70 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL lectual factors and endeavors to have himself ap- proved by investigating the ways in which strength and ability may be turned into the most effective directions of human effort. XI TACTICS Purpose. — Every school needs a simple system of tactics that is well understood by all and that relieves the necessity of making every transaction a special order. The chief purpose of all tactics is to save the time of every one identified with the school. A country school should be so well or- ganized and so successfully managed that all the time allotted can be given to the educational work. When the tactics are well understood and have been carefully selected, they are self-explanatory, because they are founded on reason, they become a benefit alike to order, to study, and to recitation. Tactics are not substitutes for the work that teach- ers ought to do; they are plans of management that accomplish what the teachers ought not to do. It is necessary to suggest that tactics have their limitation and should not be invented for all sorts of conditions. A teacher may be too much of a tactician and spend more time and thought and effort upon the developing of the tactics he deems desirable than would be required to conduct the things sought without tactics. When it is neces- 71 72 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL sary to do similar things frequently and to do them in similar ways, then it is that tactics have a proper place. The Use. — Mechanical movements that are ex- ecuted by signals or by word of command must be justified on the basis of helpfulness, usefulness, and comprehensiveness. Even when it is well to have these movements depend upon a system of tactics, it must be recognized that simplicity rather than complexity should prevail and that the less such special organization or arbitrary management is required, the better it will be for the governing authority as well as for the pupils being directed. The maintaining of an arbitrary system of signals is very exhaustive upon the energy of a teacher, particularly if constant explanation as to their meaning or purpose is necessary. Common-sense should always prevail. There is no substitute for good judgment, for on it depends, after all, the eradication of abuses, the correction of evils, and the reform of bad conduct. Whenever any part of a system of tactics dispenses with judgment, with fair dealing, or with the freedom and rights of either teacher or pupils, the time has come for the teacher to adopt a new plan of management. Opening and Closing School. — The special kind of ceremonials which can best be used at the open- ing and at the closing of the daily session of a TACTICS 73 school depends upon the arrangement of the room, the location of the door through which the pupils pass, the form of the hall that connects the school- room with the door, and the permitted rights and privileges of the playgrounds of the school. The system that may be suitable for one place is rarely serviceable for other places, unless the gen- eral conditions are practically identical. If play- ground privileges are general, and a large number of pupils take advantage of them, remaining at play as long as circumstances permit, then the tactics to be applied need to be more formal than they would need to be where the number of pupils is small and the need for formal procedure is un- necessary. When many pupils are to be managed, military precision should be employed and a reg- ular order of procedure should be adopted. In a similar way, dismissal from the room may be necessarily formal, and the precision required may be very exact, every pupil having his place and ev- ery one's turn being recognized. Whatever may be the plan, the orderly coming and going of masses of pupils must receive the most careful super- vision in order that accidents may be prevented, the rights of the weaker and the smaller preserved, and the authority of the teacher recognized. Overdiscipline. — Frequently the conditions are so unusual, the problems to be solved are so dif- 74 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL ficult, and the tactics to be enforced so dominant that a type of overdiscipline becomes a necessity. This appears prominently in inclement weather, in cases of panic or alarm, in situations where the disposition of the pupils is inimical to the teacher's authority, and at any other times when the unex- pected or the unusual appears. The teacher is sometimes compelled to be more on duty and more in control during recess and noon periods than dur- ing the session, because the problems involved are more urgent and the difficulties that arise need immediate adjustment. In dealing with these matters order and conduct of a reasonable grade are all that should be expected. There is such a thing as attempting to compel order and conduct of remarkable kinds that are beautiful to look upon, but suppressive in result and training. Such a system does not train in self-control or self- direction, and prevents the pupils from using their initiative and their capability in ways that contrib- ute to their proper development or their personal enjoyment and comfort. Suppression is wrong in principle and in training, as it does not lead to that independence or that self-adjustment that is es- sential to a happy and productive life. The School-Room. — Unless there is an abso- lute necessity for signals in the school-room they should not be used. Order and quiet may be TACTICS 75 obtained by posture and by patiently waiting. Calmly standing in the presence of an audience is usually sufficient to secure attention in as short a time as any other method can procure. The ringing of a bell, the rapping on a desk, or the producing of any peculiar noise to secure attention is not necessarily as helpful as silent methods. A request is stated much more effectively when self- control and patience are manifested by the ad- ministrator. In a similar way the calling and the dismissing of classes, the sending of pupils to the blackboard, or the returning of them to their regular places should be secured with as little dis- play and tactical management as possible. In fact, the pupils can do these things in many in- stances without command, if there is a clock in the room and the programme is faithfully obeyed. The return of one class to their regular sittings may be employed as a signal for the calling of the next class recitation. If the teacher should omit the recognition of the fact that the time has come for the closing of a recitation, the members of the class whose recitation is due could stand in their places, thus calling attention to the fact that the time had come for a change in the work. Ingenuity and Novelty. — The best tactics rec- ognize a necessity to relieve monotony of every kind. Rigid forms of discipline, such as a definite 76 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL posture at the desk, an exact method of getting excused from the room, a particular form of study, or other regular practices of the school, are not endurable. Ingenuity should be used to prepare a sensible plan to meet a certain condition in an individual school. To illustrate: a large school was very difficult to dismiss in the evening because of the arrangements possible for clothing and lunch-baskets. It occurred to the teacher to pro- pound a problem in addition and allow the first one who obtained the correct answer to get ready quietly to retire. The proper answer to the prob- lem was written on the blackboard after the dicta- tion was completed. Pupils who did not get this answer the first time made an additional trial. The scheme proved popular, it accomplished the purpose, and it was successful in giving an excel- lent drill in accuracy in addition as well as secur- ing a quiet dismissal. The results educationally were much more effective because the competition inspired the pupils with the desire to add large problems with positive accuracy. Thus novelty and originality count for much in school work. The less experience a teacher has, the more the reason to study out solutions for the problems of management and the more necessity to employ useful methods in securing a helpful discipline. To this end the becoming acquainted with the TACTICS 77 persons and the names of the pupils the beginning day is of the greatest importance. The possession of this knowledge and the ability to use it are a great advantage in obtaining control of the school. This can easily be done by the teacher's drawing of a floor plan of the school-room and as the pu- pils are being enrolled by writing their names on the proper place in this drawing. By placing this floor plan on the desk the teacher can easily as- certain any name that is temporarily forgotten, by identifying the location of the pupil with the name on that plan. Such simple methods as these are often very helpful. XII EXAMINATIONS Their Place. — Formal, definite, written and oral examinations have their place in the work of a school if they are properly given and are not ex- aggerated in their purpose. They have a legiti- mate province that cannot be ignored, as without them there is a lack of training in accuracy of statement and of care in knowing things fully and exactly. There is always a chance for the over-use as well as the under-use of any such instrumentality as the examination. It is equally true of any other kind of method employed in school work. For- mal rules, regulations, and plans often continue in force beyond their usefulness and are abused, be- cause the teacher places system above judgment and theory above practice. There was a time when examination systems were regarded with such remarkable esteem that their abuses received no attention because they were considered as a necessity of the system. As a result weary, ex- haustive hours were required of both teachers and pupils in order to obtain results that were not commensurate with the strain and the torture in- 78 EXAMINATIONS 79 flicted. This was caused very largely by the great importance and the definite decisions attributed to the system. These abuses are not a part of examinations when their object is normal and their use is reasonable. Their Province. — The iconoclast has attempted to break to pieces the idol of the school-master and the school committee by demanding the abo- lition of all examining systems, with the hope of substituting in their place the estimates and the opinions of the teacher for the records made in the formal examination. This theory of educational management has been so largely accepted that progressive teachers hesitate to use any system of examination for fear of the criticism that may be aroused. As a consequence of these looser methods the results in English spelling, in English composi- tion, and in accurate knowledge of literature, his- tory, and mathematics are not up to the standard maintained during the prevalence of the examina- tion system. There seem to be no positive equiva- lents in to-day's educational system for the strenu- ous drills, the classified outlines, and the specific definitions that were obtained in the old-time spell- ing-schools, lyceums, and formal tests that had such prominence a generation ago. It is certainly proper to return to the faith and the practice of the fathers where results are more effective. There 80 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL is, then, a middle ground in the acceptance of the examination as a good instrument to secure thoroughness, to develop power of discussion, and to attain accuracy of statement and definiteness of conclusions. Their Nature. — The nature of the examinations that should be given depends entirely upon the subject examined, as there must be special adapta- bility to the needs and the possibilities of every department of study. Mathematics has different possibilities in this regard from history, reading, spelling, or geography, because it is a much more exact and limited subject of study and its plans of presentation and representation are much more given in the lessons taught. Language methods and plans of instruction should be such that a sort of examining system is continuously in employ- ment. No manuscript of any kind can be pre- pared, no oral discussion of any sort can be given, and no recitation can be conducted that is not more or less an examination in English. The teacher must take cognizance of errors, of short- comings, of lack of clearness, and of deficiency in view all the time, and require the correction of the same so as to develop a better usage. When examinations are to be given certain principles should be obeyed, as the questions selected must be adapted in form and in requirement to the age EXAMINATIONS 81 and to the development of the pupils who take the test. The kind of query that is suitable for the eighth-grade pupil is not proper for the third- grade pupil even if the topic is somewhat similar. The pupil's qualifications in the subject, his use of language, his experience in answering questions, should all be given due attention when success is regarded as an important element to be sought. Their Aim. — The well-taught and well-trained pupils should always succeed in any proper ex- amination. Otherwise it shows a lack of reason- ableness as to difficulties, a condition that is a dis- credit to the teacher rather than to the pupils. School work should be planned for success rather than failure, and not to attain such a satisfactory state indicates that the teacher has not conducted affairs as was rightly expected. The aim of the teacher's examination of a class is to test the results that the teacher supposes the pupils have attained, in order to ascertain if the preparation has been complete. If not found to be so, a review is essential and more training must be secured be- fore the work can be satisfactory. While the ex- amination commonly brings out the pupil's weak- nesses, it actually exhibits the things in which the teacher's work is yet to be perfected. Study and school work are for the pupils' good rather than their harm, to strengthen them in their future ap- 82 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL plication so that they are qualified to stand the tests that the world will later require of them in active life. When the examinations are oral, then the teaching should have prepared the way for them, and for the same reason written examina- tions demand a careful drill in that particular kind of preparation. Their Frequency. — There is naturally much va- riation in opinion as to the frequency of examina- tions. This is caused by the necessities being dif- ferent in branches of study and also in schools as organized. Language examinations are almost daily exercises. Good work in this line even ad- vises the "drop" examination in order to ascertain the scholastic status at any time. History and geography do not require any such attention as does language, as pupils may forget much that they have learned of these branches and not be much the worse for it. School work is often com- bined so that the important and the unimportant, the material and the immaterial, are confused. So far as training in language is concerned, the proper usage or the correct style must be secured in every way possible. In most subjects a monthly investigation through a test may be sufficient, but there are always some subjects which need atten- tion and exaction two or three times more fre- quently. EXAMINATIONS 83 Their Purpose. — The three principal objects of having the examinations are as follows : 1. To test the complete apprehension of the pu- pils as to the exact details of particular lessons, in order to try specifically the knowledge of the pupils on the subject matter that is essential and important in after progress and development. This class of examinations needs to be quite fre- quent, as they are an attempt to bring a review into the minds of the pupils through a conscious re- consideration of what is decidedly worth remem- bering for all time. This conscious reconsidera- tion of valuable knowledge is of more importance than the primary vigorous mastery of it. 2. To test the pupils' power to make practi- cal application of the knowledge they have been taught. This kind of examination is a sort of original investigation, because it requires the pu- pils to use what they know in constructing new combinations of their knowledge. This method has great educational value in that it leads pupils to turn what they have learned into practical ends. It is also a similar test to that end in all kinds of business, as it brings out the ingenuity of the in- dividual as well as his skill in thinking out applica- tions. To get the full benefits that are rightly to be expected, great honesty must be shown by the pupils in actually presenting their own individual 84 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL work. It is the original quality that here must be recognized and none other should be accepted as complying with the standard of excellence pre- scribed. ' 3. To test the qualifications and acquirements of pupils to so complete a subject as to be entitled to advancement to a higher grade of study. This kind of examination is usually prepared by the superintendent or some outside person. It should be a general examination, presenting moderate dif- ficulties, and should be of such a character that cramming or short-time preparation will not suf- fice. Such an examination should follow a general review conducted by the teacher and should con- sist of such questions and topics as well-prepared pupils ought to consider reasonable and appropri- ate. The pupil who is ready for such a test should not be able to criticise either the form, the object, or the scope of the questions propounded, because he should be impressed with their adaptation to his present state of education. Patience. — The need for great patience and for great deliberateness in conducting, as well as in taking, examinations must be recognized. Exam- inations have their difficulties for the teacher as well as for the pupils. They may be either wisely or unwisely organized and conducted; they may be useful or useless; they may be helpful or help- EXAMINATIONS 85 less — all depending upon the wisdom employed by those authorized to prepare questions, to read answers, or to determine grades. The history of human effort shows that it takes a great deal of wisdom to prudently handle such an agency in educational endeavor. Patience and persever- ance have here their true place of service. The examiner and the examined both need the sym- pathy of the other, as either is at a disadvan- tage. The practical and the useful should be constantly remembered and emphasized, while sensible action and reasonable acceptance are continually essential. XIII STUDY Lessons. — The proper assignment of the lessons that are to be prepared by study is an important function that the teacher may perform in so care- less and so indifferent a manner that the pupils are not given a fair chance to make a good pres- entation of themselves at the recitation that fol- lows. It ought to be recognized that good recita- tions can be insured by good preparation and in no other way. The mastery of the use of text- books and the capability in obtaining a compre- hension of the lessons assigned depend largely upon the teacher's prudence, intelligence, and good sense. It is essential that this part of the work be so conducted as to make the pupil's success a positive certainty. Direction, guidance, and sym- pathy are essential factors in a successful study hour. Anybody can assign pages or topics or chapters for preparation, but it takes a teacher of the best quality to assign the right quantity, to point out the real difficulties that will be met, and to adapt the requirements of study to the capa- bilities of a particular class of pupils. That such 86 STUDY 87 requirements should always be reasonable, possi- ble, and certain of accomplishment is the proper basis for definite results. Mistakes. — It is a common mistake to assume that there is large benefit in attempting to study whether the pupil does or does not succeed in at- taining the preparation needed. It is equally an error to assume that pupils can be expected to pre- pare effectively a lesson just because it is credita- bly presented by a text-book and the subject mat- ter has been definitely assigned by the teacher. Neither is it true that text-books are easily read, or that the thought they convey is easily compre- hended. Experience proves that every kind of text-book, every new science, every new line of in- formation, every new thought, in order to be com- prehended by the average public-school pupil, needs interpretation, explanation, and illustration. A good text-book is a discussion of the subject matter of a branch in a brief form, and this gen- erally needs much elaboration to be adapted to the experience and the present knowledge of the pupils. Much information that is said to be pub- lished because it is in print in the form of a book is not really published, so far as the men and women of the world are concerned. This is largely true because it is a very difficult task to get the in- formation contained from the words given by the 88 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL book. It becomes necessary, therefore, for a teacher to prepare the way fully so that the pupils may use the book efficiently in the required prep- aration of the lessons. A Test. — Geography text-books are always dif- ficult for pupils because of the vocabulary that an author must use. Even at the best, the lan- guage employed is not a part of the common peo- ple's vocabularies, and the pupils find themselves struggling to secure the thoughts to be acquired that are so securely hidden in a style of language that is not at all familiar to them. This accounts, in part, for much of the unsatisfactory preparation that pupils show in such a subject. A little story of an actual case may concretely show the truth of this statement. A little girl was assigned a brief lesson in a descriptive work on geography concerning certain facts about the peoples and the productions of Asia. Her teacher knew that her work had been uniformly unsatisfactory, and at- tributed the failures to lack of diligent study. To overcome this apparent defect the teacher told the pupil that she must thoroughly prepare the lesson assignment for the day, or she would be severely punished for the delinquency. This promise of discipline greatly worried the pupil, because she felt her inability to do what was asked. Endeav- oring to be more than fair, the teacher excused STUDY 89 the little girl from the school-room and allowed her to go into the school-yard under a beautiful shade- tree to prepare this lesson. It happened that the superintendent came by the little pupil and stopped to inquire regarding her work. Learning the situation, he took the text-book and carefully read very slowly the few paragraphs that consti- tuted the lesson. As he went along he stopped at the more difficult words and asked their meaning. Of course the little girl could not give proper an- swers, because many of these words were outside of her vocabulary. He then told her what the words meant in simpler language, and gave liberal and generous interpretations to the sentences that were being studied. He then had the pupil read the lesson to him and make explanations as she proceeded. He followed this by asking her to recite the short lesson to him without the book in hand. This systematic plan succeeded. It is needless to say that the pupil made a successful presentation of her study the following recitation hour. This work did not take more than a quar- ter of an hour, and yet the pupil had fully mas- tered a difficult lesson that would have been impossible if left to her own ingenuity and appli- cation. Open-Book Lessons. — The kind of instruction as to study that pupils must have requires much 90 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL attention and thought on the part of teachers, because they must fit the needs of the individual classes. For this reason the best way is to study the text-books of special subjects in an open-book recitation, thus making sure of the pupils' under- standing the subject matter to be learned. By so doing a short time in preparation beyond the joint work done will be all that will be required to guarantee success with the subject. The text- book is never as important as the teacher, because explanation and interpretation of the thought and the acquiring of the strange vocabulary are the prominent parts in study. Attempting to master a book where the facts stated are not compre- hended is an impossible undertaking. Open-book recitations have the advantage of closed-book recitations in the sense that they are not a test of the memory of words and sentences, but are a test of the ability to translate the language of the text-book into the every-day language of the pupil. Another benefit gained is that the pupils are shown how the teacher studies and investigates the sub- ject, how he finds the unknown words in the dic- tionary, and how he interprets the sentences and classifies them by illustration. It is always a benefit to follow the thinking of others, recogniz- ing how conclusions and opinions are reached and how differences are adjusted. STUDY 91 Values. — Mental development and intellectual progress depend largely upon the results that in- dividual efforts secure. It is for this reason that effective methods have special values. Sitting at a table, looking at a book steadfastly and ab- sorptively, is not certain evidence that progress in study is being secured. The form is not sufficient; the results are the actual things needed. The movements of activity may be a fiction or a farce, unless the pupil's mind is completely used and is possessed by realities that cannot be mistaken. The values of study depend upon its prosecution in a vigorous spirit, upon its being active and direct in its object, and upon its being so abundant in results and so notable in developing an increase of capability and strength that progress and growth in the pursuit of knowledge are shown in the char- acter and in the enlargement of life. XIV THE RECITATION Object. — The period of time allotted to any class for the consideration of a subject in any branch of study is called the recitation. The main object of such an assignment is to enable the teacher to investigate the preparation in the as- signed topics that the members of the class have made. In the public schools it is customary to have five such periods a week, one assignment be- ing given each school day. In the country school there are so many separate classes and so much reason to maintain a varied programme that it would be better if some of the branches, like writ- ing, drawing, language, hygiene, and general les- sons in literature and history, were assigned only two or three times a week, thus giving opportunity for many things to be done that are now generally omitted. Under the programme given in the chapter on management a school could have all the work there outlined for study and recitation, and not have any class recitation over three times a week, as the actual work in arithmetic, reading, geography, and other branches can go on by the 92 THE RECITATION 93 daily oral and written work combined, so that the teacher gives more or less individual instruction each alternate day, and oral class recitation the other days, in the branches here mentioned. Value. — The custom of conducting recitations is so universal, and so strongly indorsed by teach- ers and superintendents, that its supreme value is very rarely questioned. It is well, then, to rec- ognize the fact that what is really wanted in school work is not necessarily formal class recita- tion so much as a definite opportunity for the pupils to have frequent conferences with the teacher. There are qualities in work where close supervision exists, and where much personal at- tention is given through individual instruction, that are better in the main than can be obtained by class recitations. The method of individual tutor- ing used by aristocratic families in directing the education of their children is probably the most certainly effective of all plans that are known. The method of instruction in small classes of not more than ten pupils that was used by the Jesuits was also notably successful, but it must be remem- bered that it depended to a degree upon the brighter pupils giving instruction to their slower class-mates. Every country school can well afford to adopt a system of class leaders wherein the better-informed pupils will be permitted to give 94; THE COUNTRY SCHOOL aid and instruction to other pupils in the school as assistants to the teacher. This plan existed in the schools organized under the Lancasteran system, where one head-teacher undertook to teach a thou- sand pupils through the help of class leaders previ- ously instructed. The extravagance of this claim was early recognized, and a reasonable reduction of pupils to a single teacher was made a necessity, but the importance of pupils learning from each other was never discredited. Every good-sized district school has a similar condition to meet, and in no way can results be more definitely guaranteed than by employing all the talent and all the scholar- ship of the pupils in instructing those who are their inferiors in experience and in knowledge. Economy. — Class organization is adopted as a system of approved instruction because such a combination of individuals, able to receive the identical lesson at the same time, is notably economical. It is not claimed by the well-in- formed that the method of class instruction is superior to that of individual instruction, but that excellent results can be obtained by using class instruction, provided the teacher is capable and efficient and the number of pupils to a class is not too large. Even in class instruction, every means is used to insure that each pupil can do all the work assigned the class, and that he comprehends THE RECITATION 95 the points that are fundamental and important. It is also recognized that the pupils in a class ob- tain much benefit from hearing each other recite, from the different points of view presented, and from the criticisms, corrections, and supplementary instruction that the teacher gives while conduct- ing the recitation. A well-handled recitation also adds interest to the subject, compels additional investigation and inquiry, and leads to a constant conference between the pupils themselves regard- ing the facts and impressions they later ascertain from books and other sources. Economy is also largely dependent upon the careful instruction that the teacher gives regarding the next day's preparation, since much more is readily accom- plished when the pupils are well informed regard- ing the task assigned. Form. — There is no absolute, definite form of conducting a recitation that can be indorsed as the model for teachers to follow and that can be recommended to young teachers seeking to im- prove their school work. The best and the most successful way to-day may need much modifica- tion to-morrow, if it has equivalent success, as every day's undertaking must meet adequately the necessities in the class and in the subject that are experienced. Stereotyped lessons, however per- fect in design or in logic, are not sufficient to guar- 96 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL antee success because freedom, spontaneity, and initiative on the part of the teacher are essential to power and to practical capability. Novelty is of recognized value, originality is a notable gift, while manner and information are forces that should be accepted as of great use. There is much liability of experienced teachers becoming formal and mechanical in the conduct of their work, so that their style is perfunctory and uninteresting, compelling them to depend upon drill and repeti- tion for obtaining the narrow results that after education will test. Meeting the Expectation. — Pupils are keen in their insight and easily reach conclusions regard- ing the things they may expect in the recitation from the mechanical teacher. To meet these pe- culiar conditions they make definite preparation, and thus suit the plans and methods of the manage- ment so perfectly as to be granted better records for class work than their actual merit deserves. By meeting the conditions imposed they impress the teacher with an ability, an interest, and an ap- plication that they do not possess. To overcome such exigencies teachers should break with the traditions, and avoid all plans and processes that are formal, so that the realities may be prominent and the vital and the personal may dominate. THE RECITATION 97 Frauds. — There are subtleties that pupils prac- tise upon careless and pretentious teachers that are very cunning and very effective. Few teach- ers, however sincere and honest, are able to pro- tect the recitation hour from the tricks of the trade that deception gives and that ingenuity develops. It is thus that the actual assigned recitation is postponed by the pupils' asking for information on topics not related, or partially re- lated, to the subject assigned for the class hour. The success of such a plan to postpone the day of recitation depends very largely upon the impres- sion of interest that the pupils can convey, as well as the wish of the teacher to be courteous and to be considered well-informed on a broad range of subjects. Another way that is equally successful is for the pupils of the class to enter into a debate on certain questions that they bring forward in the lesson and thus exhaust the time in fruitless and often indeterminate discussion. In a similar way pupils can turn the recitation about by pro- pounding inquiries ingeniously and compel the teacher to do the reciting rather than themselves — thus reversing the plans and intentions of the teacher, whose main object was to examine the pupils as to their progress in knowledge and re- quire them to talk rather than to use the time in lecture or in explanation. 98 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL The Plan. — It is well to recognize that a well- conducted recitation calls out all of the activities of the minds of the pupils through demonstration, illustration, statement, and application. Each one of these characteristics must appear in a well- digested plan for a lesson. An oral recitation as a statement of what the text-book says about any topic is not a satisfactory result, even if absolutely correct, unless the pupil can turn it over and illus- trate in his own language, completing it by demon- stration and application. A written recitation may be a great failure from the fact that its errors may not be designated and completely corrected, its statements may be lacking in essential fulness and completeness in understanding, or may be overdone and lengthy without either clearness and precision or comprehensiveness. For this reason a combination of the oral and the written methods is essential. The oral should be devoted to that part that would take a long time to prepare and is largely explanatory, while the written should be confined to that which demands exact statement and can be put into brief language, in order to en- able it to be well-retained in memory for future use. There should not be any uniform plan in calling upon the members of a class to recite. A class roll is proper for a record of attendance and of progress and of results, but it should never be THE RECITATION 99 used in any definite order. When a class is small this problem may not arise, but when the class is large the individual pupils cannot be easily called upon daily, and hence they can be made to hope that they may systematically recite, and also systematically rest. In addition, the system of permitting volunteers as a plan of recitation to follow may lead also to equivalent abuses and to equally unsatisfactory results. XV THE COMMONER The Power. — The teacher is never independent of the control of the community he serves, because the people are his employers and consider him as a public servant. He is a part of the machinery of the school system that the people have provided, and is recognized as a necessary factor in the con- duct of the education that is required by civiliza- tion, but at the same time he is regulated rather than consulted, dominated rather than obeyed, and controlled rather than followed. This ex- plains the phases of the salary question, the lack of a long tenure of employment, and the causes that contribute to the popularity of the license system, as all of these are managed by the people through their lay representatives that have been elected or appointed. The Influence. — The teacher needs to rec- ognize this political situation and to protect him- self and his interests by cultivating the good-will and the hearty support of as many of the people as possible. Political management and expediency 100 THE COMMONER 101 declare that the only way that the teacher can wield an influence is by being an actual commoner, so that he is always approachable and is thor- oughly appreciated and esteemed. To acquire the ability of being a good mixer in social and com- munal activities is helping his own interests, ad- vancing the cause of the school, and developing the efficiency of the masses. The wise teacher is one of the people in every sense, a sympathetic leader rather than an arbitrary dictator, a con- genial spirit as a creator and developer rather than as an egotist or an aristocrat. It is for this rea- son that personal acquaintance, friendly relations, helpful sympathy, and comprehension of others' feelings are of such great importance, since only by such relations can motives, ambitions, and en- deavors be properly understood and employed in actual service. The School. — There was a day when the school was known as a private institution, being the prop- erty of the teacher who managed and conducted it as any other private business. His prosperity depended upon the patronage he secured, and hence he conducted the work in accordance with the demand and the wish of those who intrusted to him the education of their children. Such a plan gave opportunities only to those who could afford to pay the rates and meet the other ex- 102 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL penses, and hence a large number of children were deprived of the rudiments of an education. In due time the movement for universal education became so strong that laws were passed by the leg- islatures of the States authorizing the assuming of the entire control and expense of public education. This gave public ownership and also opened the opportunity for education to all without discrim- ination. In doing this the State assumed the right to decide the standards of knowledge that a teacher must possess, the limitation of the course of study that should be provided, and the kind and extent of the system that should be organized, since, by controlling the expenditures, all other things were included as a matter of course. To do the work prescribed, school boards were elected, teachers were employed, salaries were determined, and policies were announced. In the change that occurred the teacher became an employee of the State, selling his talent, his skill, and his experience for his remuneration, called a salary. This legal relationship required that a formal contract be made, that the time of employment be determined, and that the specifications of the service to be ren- dered should be explicit and complete. All these legal formalities located authority, distributed re- sponsibilities, and defined the province that both parties were to fulfil. THE COMMONER 103 The Attitude. — By this organizing of communi- ties into school districts, with officers appointed to represent the attitude and intention of the peo- ple, the work of public education was inaugurated. By such agencies and endeavors society undertook to protect itself from the hindrances, the defects, and the evils of the age, deeming its institutions to be safer in the hands of those moderately educated than of those ignorant and illiterate. It was also assumed that this educational preparation for life which the school gave should shorten the time that an apprenticeship must take, thus benefiting civ- ilization byjnaking production earlier and larger in the lives and the services of the coming genera- tion. The aim at social betterment and at social uplift as well as at social regeneration that was thus undertaken gave to education a province that was higher in rank than most public under- takings because all of its efforts were invested in human beings rather than in material prosperity or in financial progress. This attitude toward the great things that were to be done through co- operation became the hope of national life and of a nobler civilization. Cultivating the Masses. — In a democracy the support of the masses is of the greatest importance to all who undertake a work for their betterment. There is no progress in which they do not have a 104 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL part. There is no movement for amelioration that they must not approve. There is no en- largement of responsibilities or of prospects that they must not assume. The comprehending of this condition of affairs is notably important to those who are in public-school work, since it gives abundant reason why it is necessary to cultivate the masses, obtain their hearty sympathy and co- operation, and use their strength and help in every way that is possible. Effort must be put forth to increase the good-will, the approval and the commendation of every patron so that the sup- port given and the faith bestowed may be equiva- lent to every need. Fellowship. — Wherever fellowship has been es- tablished and comprehended the best discipline becomes a fact and the best application a reality. The wishes of the teacher, under such relations, become a law to the people, so that his requests are implicitly recognized as more powerful than commands in directing his pupils. It is then that the teacher's example counts for more than can be explained, while his power of control is magnified and manifested until his masterfulness becomes remarkable. This same influence shows itself in the gregarious situations that schools exhibit. Some pupils have unusual power over their asso- ciates and schoolmates. They constitute the THE COMMONER 105 ringleaders in rebellions, controversies, and mis- chief-makings if they are on the wrong side, and they are the centre of all that is good and true if their tendencies are toward the right side. In such a case an individual pupil counts for much more than his own power, as he becomes the mouth- piece of public sentiment and the consensus of public action, bringing results that are cumulative in character and in effectiveness. He becomes the voice that must be heard and heeded, the eye, the ear, the thought-inventor, the will-expressor, of those who rely upon his guidance and his sugges- tions. The Vantage-Ground. — This situation becomes more prominent the greater the work is in scope and in capacity. It is sure and certain to estab- lish this social relation that through union gives strength and advances interests and success. The teacher must be identified in a subordinate way as a co-operator in everything that is good and true, as through this subordination he establishes his right and chance for recognized superiority in educational affairs. In no way can he win more certainly or definitely than in his willingness to work ardently and sincerely as a subordinate in the ranks in movements where others lead. By such an attitude he learns to know the effective people of the community and acquires the knowl- 106 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL edge that is necessary for him to have in uniting the people in the right way to the accomplishing of the right thing for the services he is attempt- ing to render to society. Business. — Teaching and managing a school may be permitted to take a person entirely away from business ideas and business people. The strength of a business man lies in his social rela- tions. He must know many people and select them according to their value. It is possible for a teacher to neglect an acquaintance with business ideals, business methods, or business people, hav- ing all of his following, his friends, and his co-opera- tors among those who can be of no service to him in a real way. The teacher needs friends among those that are in the world of business, because it is these who are in reality determining the policies and the plans of the school by determining the possible expenditures. The distance between the sets in society is very great. In the world of artists, poets, and authors things are discussed and believed that would never enter into the mind of a business man. In the world of teachers and of schools there is a narrow sphere of interest that gives no idea of the delights, the freedom of the mind, and the breadth of view of other callings. The contempt that many professional persons feel for the capability of making money grows out of THE COMMONER 107 the atmosphere of ideas in which they live. They rarely realize that success after all depends very largely upon comprehending business ideas and business management. The best teacher com- bines the professional and the business character- istics so that he may be at home with both the educator and the business man. This is particu- larly essential in an educational career, because business judgment and experience are parts of the work as much as are books, methods of instruction, and theories of training men and women for life. XVI THE YOUNG PEOPLE The Country. — There is no better place for a young person to live than in the country, because the general conditions are more favorable for a normal life. There is a constant complaint that the young people of to-day are not satisfied with the opportunities or the privileges they have in the country homes, and that they are constantly leaving them to live permanently in the cities and towns. They are said to be attracted by the noise, the bustle, the social advantages, and the apparent prosperity that they observe in these more crowded centres, and, in addition, they have the impres- sion that there is easier work and less sacrifice to secure an equivalent income in the city than in the country. While many of these things are more apparent than real, yet it is more or less true that the country life can make too much of drudgery and not enough of entertainment, too much of hardships and too little of the common pleasures. If the residents of the country were to pay as much proportionately for amusements, for entertain- 108 THE YOUNG PEOPLE 109 ments, and for social advantages as is paid in the towns and cities, there would not be this dearth of interest and this lack of satisfaction that now is said to exist in such localities. The Better Way. — The country people are able to have more leisure than the city people, if they only will use what time they have. Their crops and their domestic animals do not stop growing when the farmer takes a day now and then for recreation, as his business can be so organized that such days may be frequent and no loss be suffered. Since these things are absolutely true, the better way is for every community to provide the means whereby the young people may have opportunity for entertainment, amusement, rec- reation, and social life in accordance with their interests and their demands. If the school plant has been provided, as already has been suggested, there is a place for the young people to come together to have social organizations and pleasures and to get away for a time from the humdrum and the hard work that are their daily experience. The acquiring of the ability to enjoy the right kind of amusements, entertainments, and social oppor- tunities is as much a part of right training as is studying in school or working on the farm. Dis- sipation always follows a let-up from labor, unless the person thus released from the strenuousness of 110 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL occupation has some form of activity and recrea- tion to which he can turn when a holiday comes. Many men debauch themselves with the drinking of intoxicating liquors and other accompanying vices, because they have not learned to enjoy real pleasures. Whenever time hangs heavy on their hands they do not know how to occupy themselves in harmless ways, and hence turn to the harmful and the evil. A holiday becomes thereby a curse rather than a blessing to the multitudes, because they have not been taught the happiness and the enjoyment that can come from the true activities of recreation. The city and the town are thus a menace to the country youths unless they are pro- tected by a training that has taught them a better way. What Can Be. — Wise leadership indicates that every school centre should be so organized as to have a good, equipped playground that can be used by the young men and boys for lawn tennis, base-ball, foot-ball, basket-ball, track work, out- door gymnasium exercises, and other athletic activities. These recreative exercises are equally as good for the country boy and girl as for the town boy and girl, and opportunities should be provided for such privileges at public expense. The having of half-holidays to recognize this need of young people is only giving proper considera- THE YOUNG PEOPLE 111 tion to the things that civilization and common- sense commend. Young people have by nature social, aesthetic, intellectual, athletic, and spirit- ual faculties that demand opportunity for exercise and for activity. Nature's demands must be met if they are to be brought to a knowledge of nor- mal culture and right development. At the same time, the day will never come when those things that are elevating, innocent, pure, beautiful, and true will not supply the personal demand better than the artificial, the wicked, or the vicious, if the former are actually provided by the public and are made attractive and useful. In the same way, the programmes that can be held during the winter evenings at the school building, the games that can be played in the gymnasium, and the picnics and dinners that may be held will all contribute to making the school the social centre that every community so positively needs. Organization Necessary. — Such extensions and expansions of public work for the benefit of the whole people are not able to take care of them- selves. They cannot be left to the spontaneity of the community. They should be organized and conducted by the people through the proper offi- cers, and reasonable expenditures then must be made on the grounds of necessity, just the same as is now made for highways, bridges, and schools. 112 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL The provision to support this work is not so large that any community could not afford the under- taking, and the expenditures thus made would be the most helpful investments that the public could make, because they guarantee results that are essential and permanent. Play and recreation are so important and so beneficial that little if any argument should be necessary to secure the ac- ceptance of this plan of extending such opportuni- ties to those not in attendance upon the school. Such work should be systematic, it should be well managed, those who take it should submit to nec- essary regulations, and the good of all should be the main consideration. Clubs and Library. — Boys' and girls' clubs for agricultural and home economics work exist now in many school districts and townships. These or- ganizations could be much improved and strength- ened by having the school plant become the social civic centre for meetings, lectures, library work, and fairs. There is no question that all these things are beneficial and praiseworthy and that they need help and encouragement to reach a successful standard. In connection with this a community library, made up of publications to suit the needs of the young as well as the mature, would be of the largest service. Such a combination of effort and of endeavor will give greater results than THE YOUNG PEOPLE 113 individual initiative could possibly produce, even if larger expenditure is made, since co-operation decreases the expense and enlarges the opportuni- ties for increased service for the public welfare. XVII SUPERVISION The Present. — To-day there is no real super- vision of country schools, although there is an at- tempted supervision provided under the name of the county superintendent. This officer is ex- pected to manage a large territory, and in addition to that take charge of a large number of other kinds of so-called educational work that are official busi- ness in their nature and therefore must receive first attention. As a consequence, real supervision of the schools receives but limited attention and the personal work of improvement of the teach- ers and of the schools is largely postponed until some future time. Despite these interferences the county superintendency has done much that has been a benefit to education. This has been se- cured by conducting teachers' institutes, by hold- ing educational meetings, and by arousing popular interest through organizing clubs and reading cir- cles. It has also prominently contributed to sys- tematizing the work and to improving the spirit of the service by addresses given to the people at public meetings, by circulars of information 114 SUPERVISION 115 mailed to school officers and teachers, and by con- tributing in service to farmers' institutes and clubs, as opportunity offers. The Future. — But the country school of the future must receive a better and a more complete supervision than this has given, since visitation of schools should become a reality, the personal sup- port of the supervising officer should be direct rather than indirect, while the improvement in methods and management should be immediate and effective. No superintendent, however schol- arly, strong, or skilled, can efficiently supervise a territory as large as the average county and no in- dividual can succeed in real supervision that does not have authority with the appointing power so as to assist in deciding the employment of teachers and many other matters that demand the expert. The principal problem that the future must solve is the organizing of a system of supervision so that it has the power to prevent any but competent teachers from being permitted to take charge of the schools. To do this will mean that successful supervision should not undertake to direct and manage the schools of more than three or four townships of a county. Such a plan of organiza- tion would permit frequent supervisory visits and would enable such officer to know completely the strength or the weakness of the teachers employed, 116 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL and would guarantee trustworthy advice in de- termining the annual appointment of teachers. These principals, or district superintendents, should devote part of their time to assisting and direct- ing the individual teachers in charge of the sepa- rate schools, and, in addition, to co-operating with the people to such an extent as to improve and de- velop the many activities that are recognized as so necessary to the life of a progressive and happy community. The Province of Such Supervision. — Under the process of selection that has gone on for many years the district school-teachers are almost en- tirely women. While this condition is due to economical reasons in part, yet it is also due to the fact that women have proved themselves to be well adapted to the public elementary school service, and the patrons rightly consider them to be pref- erable to men in such schools. However this may be, there is yet need for work in the schools in agri- culture, mechanic arts, and related lines that men are best qualified to give, as society is at present organized, and for that reason a limited time should be given in all these schools to the things that a man is better able to do to help in these directions. Under his inspection, advice, instruction, and su- pervision the work in agriculture could be admira- bly managed, the boys' special work on the home SUPERVISION 117 farms could be investigated, recorded, and rec- ognized, and the experimental and testing work that should be conducted on the demonstration farm or garden belonging to the school could also be supervised and managed. At the same time he could inspect, direct, assist, and co-operate with the teacher in all the work done in the school, and thus bring about a unity of effort and a harmony of service that would be entirely lacking without such supervision. While women teachers can do the work in home economics and often in manual training, yet the advice and experience of the supervisor would be very valuable indeed. In addition, he should have a prominent part in all the special meetings that are held for the improve- ment of the community interests and of the school activities, as such service only needs testing to be realized and appreciated as a permanent produc- tive investment. The Ends of Supervision. — The district super- intendent will become a new factor in the upbuild- ing of the community, if he is appreciative of the greatness and the value of country life and coun- try opportunities. He will help largely in devel- oping a unity of spirit and a heartiness of action if he is possessed of the right qualifications and the progressive attitude. The ends of supervision are not so much the securing of certain standardiza- 118 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL tions in the branches of study and in the scope of work undertaken as they are to arouse public sentiment, cultivate public interest, and secure public action on all matters that are the deciding questions in determining the object of education, the purpose of school work, and the training that a human life should have in this best of all envi- ronments. He is, therefore, one of the people and occupies a place of nearness in his leadership that could not be possible in a larger territory and with more complex functions of service. He is in reality the field agent in educational activities and has as much a province in serving the people in general as he has in serving the teachers and the pupils in particular. The Broadness of Educational Organization. — It is thus decided that education is a great under- taking, not a small undertaking; that the masses of the people have not yet had a vision of what is in store for them and for their children; that the things that have already been done are small in- deed as compared to what is going to be done. This nation has the resources to undertake these great functions of civilization and government, it has the people that can be brought to this high grade of success and enlightenment, it has oppor- tunities that are not trammelled by custom, law, or precedent, it has the time to accomplish what is SUPERVISION 119 essential to a larger prosperity and a broader utility, and it has the disposition to surpass the past by the accomplishments of the future. To reach all these ideals means that experts must be secured to help the people to improve all the re- lations that are possible: education, occupation, industries, and conservation; and thus give the heritage that freedom and intelligence confer. The Expert in Civilization. — The expert is de- manded in every line of business, governmental undertaking, and special progress. It is to such as these that all must turn whenever improvement and progress are to be sought. It is thus that farm- ing, stock-raising, stock-judging, soil conserva- tion, soil reclamation, and all questions of modern agricultural life and improvement can make most development and most progress. The attempt to do without the expert is not only foolish but reck- less. The scholar must be the man that can do things as well as think things, and such a combina- tion is needed in the school-room as teacher, as well as in the field as promoting agent — the district supervisor of education and progress. This view of organization is not a fanciful one, but a prac- tical, sensible one. When the original country school was organized, and the old-fashioned school- house erected and equipped, the expenditures for building, maintenance, and teaching involved more 120 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL expense pro rata on assessed valuation, and more sacrifice upon the people individually of that day, than all the improvements, enlargements, and developments contemplated by these recommenda- tions would cost the present generation. Let the people of to-day do as well as their fathers in pro- portion to their means and civilization, and country life will be a success in every respect. XVIII THE PLACE OF RECREATION The Unity. — Every normal human being de- mands recreation as a part of his experience. He may have had exercise and still have no recreation. There is need for work to be a part of human life. The same thing is true as regards rest. Equally true must recreation form a part of the experience of every individual and of every country com- munity. It is a fact that many country school dis- tricts are entirely lacking in the possession of a social centre — a place where the adults as well as the children can come together and enjoy a com- panionship that is essential as well as desirable. Play constitutes a proper factor in a child's life, if he is given a chance for full and free develop- ment. Work is no substitute for play, and parents and teachers who treat children as not needing opportunity for play are neither scientific nor sensible in their practice. The playground is an essential factor in educational progress and should have its proper assignment of time on the pro- gramme. That a human life is a unity should never be forgotten. That the mind consists of 121 122 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL many ways of operating, all of which should be given a chance, is true. That the social contact of teacher with pupil and pupil with pupil on the playground, and in the other social activities of the school, is of lasting benefit must not be over- looked. The Playground. — Play needs to be organized and classified as well as work. It has its place in a systematic training that should not be ignored. Ample privileges and complete facilities must be provided if a satisfactory education is to be granted. To learn games and to practise them to secure efficiency are of the largest importance, because an individual must acquire a good grade of skill really to enjoy the recreation that his nature truly needs. The small school, with its large yard as a playground, conducted by a teacher that successfully instructs in recreative exercises that develop agility and capability in the pupils, gives the right plan of education. The large school with limited playground, and with a lack of op- portunity for the social development of children, lacks real interest and is unable to offer more than a partial and incomplete education. The move- ment for municipal playgrounds in the greater cities is in response to nature's demand for a nor- mal development of the native powers of children. The government of children, their ability to stud}' THE PLACE OF RECREATION 123 energetically, their capability in their intellectual activities, are greatly improved when the demands of their whole nature are fully met and the op- portunities that are essential are conferred. Value of Recreation. — Recreation is too fre- quently confused with dissipation and is too com- monly classified as an actual waste of time and strength. Games are also confused by some per- sons with gambling and moral ruin, because games of chance and of skill are used by perverted people as a basis of betting and gambling. Harm- less, innocent, beneficial recreative games do not deserve such ignominy because their province is sometimes abused by degraded and wicked per- sons. The American idea of exercise is that of walking a certain number of miles, of sawing so many cords of wood, of ploughing so many rows of corn, of taking a buggy or an auto ride of an hour, of working vigorously for a quarter of an hour a wall machine, the whole object being work and nothing more. The American idea of recreation is that of going on some railway trip for ten days, of taking an ocean voyage, of going fishing or hunting, of attending some so-called social func- tion — all on a theory that change of activity gives what is needed and the best way to dispose of it is to take large quantities at some time in the year when business is slack and regular work can 124 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL be omitted. Proper recreation is a part of every day's programme, and the business and profes- sional worlds make a great mistake by violating nature's law. The labor world needs fewer hours of work and more hours of genuine healthy recrea- tion in order to serve fully and successfully the occupations that they follow. The reason that so many people dissipate by drunkenness and by wretchedness every holiday they have is because they have never acquired any skill in such recre- ations as are sane and healthful, and hence, when time is given to enjoy at their pleasure, they at once drift into the most degrading dissipations. Applied to Teaching. — The recreative side of class work should also be recognized and employed. The work can be so organized that it is highly en- joyable. The teacher should lead in the making of the learning and the reciting of lessons as full of the enjoyable as possible. There are kinds of harmless competition that are very enjoyable and entertaining, and these should be introduced into class work as normal and valuable. The conduct of a school does not need to be humdrum or dicta- torial to be a virtue-training agency. Such a plan has been too long adopted by many good teachers as the proper kind of discipline to maintain. As- ceticism is not in conformity to either American- ism or democratic conceptions of liberty, and it is THE PLACE OF RECREATION 125 not the proper method to insure maturity or re- sponsibility. In all life and in all schools there is enough monotony and humdrum that must exist at the best, and there is thus no need to make them a practice as if they might produce virtue and capacity, while in reality they induce and compel contrary tendencies and possibilities. The Province Defined. — Education is not the isolation of a human being when it is rightly con- ducted. Its real province is to fit him to live hap- pily and blessedly with others. Education should make a person more human and more natural, not more conventional and more artificial. It is not removing one from life and common experience, because it is truly getting one ready for a broader sympathy and a wider efficiency. It is not to raise him to a higher caste of exclusiveness, but to prepare him for the largest adaptability as a com- moner. The school is the place where the teacher lives with the children, where he contributes daily to the social progress of the pupils in happiness and character, where he secures the kind of atti- tudes toward the things of civilization that the pupils normally believe and thus enables them to act the part of contributors to the social uplift. The deepest and most lasting enjoyments in life are not those of the appetites and the senses; they are not found in the frivolities and dissipations 126 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL of the age; they are not in the extravagances and the abuses of the physical nature; since they truly belong to the higher activities of the mind and the soul. Hence, the good school is an actual, living social centre where the work is so conducted that souls are born into the kingdom of light and pros- perity by recognizing the greatest possibilities that the world of happiness and of success can produce. XIX TAXATION AND THE STATE The Business Side. — The solving of the prob- lem of country schools is as much a business ques- tion as it is a professional question. The getting of both of these phases of activity into a practica- ble working condition is no simple matter. The leaving of the initiative to the local community gives no assurance of reasonable progress or of possible progress, because this plan divides a State into so many individual units that a great part of them can be indifferent to the important needs of the present day and decline to adopt a policy or a plan that guarantees efficiency. Hence, most States are beginning to recognize that there must be State initiative as well as local initiative and that the State should have a large part in conduct- ing a popular educational system. At the same time there must be enough local initiative and local management to insure local interest and local enthusiasm, because there is nothing so popular in success as that which is obtained by local en- deavor at local cost. The Part of the State. — The work of the State should be that of inducing investment, encourag- 127 128 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL ing activity, urging greater efficiency, and demand- ing actual results such as are absolutely essential to progress and development. These can be easily secured when there is a distribution of State funds to the local communities according to accomplish- ment and endeavor rather than according to popu- lation or to area of territory. What the schools need is efficiency, and nothing less than that should be allowed to exist whenever State funds are ac- cepted and used in conducting the schools. Even the small amount of money now annually distrib- uted by most of the States, if it were bestowed for actual results, would produce much more good than the present system of distribution can secure. The State could contribute largely to the development of interest and improvement if it controlled the distribution of one-fourth or one-third of the in- come necessary to support efficient schools. This money could be raised by general taxation and then be allotted as subsidies for actual stand- ards of accomplishment. By so doing indepen- dence and local management could be induced to undertake enterprises of a kind which would be entirely neglected and unappreciated without financial co-operation. State Subsidy as a Plan. — This is not a new plan of support or of government. The State has tested it in many other fields than the country TAXATION AND THE STATE 129 school, and in every case it has resulted in activity and in additional investment. State subsidy has been used to promote teachers' institutes, agricult- ural fairs, farmers' institutes, short-course farm- ers' schools, county agricultural secondary schools, high schools, grammar schools, and even teacher- training in high schools, and the results all show what would immediately happen if State funds were placed within reach of country school dis- tricts when certain reasonable conditions are fully met and certain definite improvements are shown to competent inspection. Payment on results has been used in other countries than the United States for the expanding and encouraging of ele- mentary education for the masses; payment on re- sults has been the system of normal-school teacher- training used in Pennsylvania for many years; and payment on results will be the most important factor in adjusting and deciding the country- school problems of the present age wherever it is thoroughly applied. Inspection. — The introduction of the system of a State subsidy for country schools will necessarily demand an enlargement of the work of inspection and supervision. These are necessary factors in seeking the right development of any educational system, and without them a State subsidy, how- ever liberal and generous, would not be productive 130 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL of certain results. This inspection should be both local and State, and there should be a helpful co- operation that would develop the right spirit and the right condition. Those counties that secured the results sought should receive a reward in in- creased pay for the inspectors and enlarged op- portunities for the work being done. Such an organization would require a State institute for inspectors and department supervisors that would be organized by the State superintendent of pub- lic instruction and that would include such work, lectures, and round-tables as would produce a positive efficiency that could be fully realized in the work to be done in the local districts. These inspectors and supervisors should be active fac- tors in the holding of institutes for the local teach- ers in order to develop a condition of harmony that would insure an approximation toward ex- cellence in knowledge and in management. The Teachers. — When the State has a part in the paying of the expenses of country-school edu- cation; when the system of inspection has become a business and a vocation; when educational en- deavor is a reality and a purpose, then the stand- ard that the teacher must reach can be defined and enforced. The capability and the scholar- ship of a teacher should be determined by going to a properly organized school and completing a TAXATION AND THE STATE 131 reasonable course rather than by a meagre and limited examination such as is by law now a com- mon system of licensing persons to teach children and receive public money. Training, not exam- ining, should be the door to professional standing in all public service. Teachers will not be better qualified, they will not be better educated, they will not be better trained, until there is reason for their meeting an improved standard and until there is money to pay them for improved services. Then, the country-school teacher is a special teacher just as much as kindergartners, primary teachers, or language teachers are special teachers, and they should be valued for their specialization and for their adaptability and fitness to enter into country life and country ideals of nature and culture. They need much knowledge that is not possessed by city teachers, they need large ideas of their oppor- tunities that present-day possibilities do not allow, and they need an interest and a spirit that are pos- sible only where nature and man come into such close relations. The State, and the State alone, can do these things, can enforce these standards, and can compel obedience. The Local Field. — These organized activities are all commended and approved and advised because the local field must be reached, the local interest must be improved, and the local initiative must be 132 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL called into the highest continuous activity. The supreme importance of this work, the grandeur of civilization's efforts, the conservation of the resources of the country, the enlargement of the possibilities of manhood and womanhood, the im- provement of the means of culture and wealth, the increasing of the usefulness and the helpfulness of money and property, the expanding of the chances for civilization — all depend upon honest management, organized efficiency, and capable training granted to the common people. Since these things are so absolutely true, it seems that some State subsidy system is the better way to produce early and definite results in country school systems. XX THE DEMONSTRATION SCHOOLS The Test. — Educational work depends upon demonstration and experience for its acceptance by the masses. Whatever results can be seen and identified as specially beneficial to personal suc- cess or to individual and social progress, these results are enthusiastically approved and highly commended. The country schools are so near the masses, and are so definitely determined in their scope and character by the masses, that theories which call for expenditure and investment in order to prove their correctness are rarely given an op- portunity to be tested and investigated. This con- dition compels the masses to be conservative on all public problems that require money for their con- sideration and solution, and also causes them to be doubtful of and opposed to every proposition that has not been established by experience as wise, prudent, and economical. Then the masses secure their property and their money in such direct and arduous ways that they know exactly how much labor and sacrifice these accumula- tions have cost, and for that reason they are well 133 134 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL satisfied with public affairs as they are, provided they find their maintenance not financially burden- some. The Progress Made. — It is to be recognized that the country school of to-day is very similar in or- ganization, aim, and results to the schools that were originally opened by the pioneers of the sev- eral States. The school-houses, the school-yards, the teachers, and the course of instruction have not materially or personally changed in the past fifty years. The progress made in transportation, in mail facilities, in other kinds of communication, in financial matters, in municipal management and improvement, in highways, in secondary and higher education, and, in fact, in almost every line that can be suggested, has been very notable, but the country school is the same institution in this greatly enlarged environment as it was in the days of primitive society. This condition is not due to lack of supervision alone, but to lack of aim, to lack of comprehension of the problem, to inde- pendence of school districts, to notions of econ- omy, and to unappreciation of the money value of competent and scholarly teaching. Independence a Bar. — The original organization of school districts on the independent local plan has been a bar to any agitation for improvement and for reorganization because the local community THE DEMONSTRATION SCHOOLS 135 had rights that were necessary to recognize and to respect. It was rightly assumed by the people that it was for them to initiate such reforms and make such expenditures as they deemed necessary, it being the business of no other higher govern- ment to undertake to require reforms or improve- ments. The desire to keep expenditures at the minimum in the ambition to get ahead in the world by careful saving of the family and personal re- sources, the lack of communal information as to what was being done elsewhere in the cities and towns, developed a spirit of self-satisfaction and of willingness to let things alone, while the accumu- lation of wealth and the great prosperity of the country communities so satisfied the people that they did not feel the need for anything better and more satisfactory than they had. It was such conditions as these that produced an anomalous status as regards education, showing undertakings and activities that do not comparatively conform to the progress found on every hand concerning all other kinds of public enterprise. The State's Province. — Education is the one great undertaking that has been left to local in- terest and local initiation. It is of too great pub- lic concern, and it involves too many contingencies to the people of the State as a whole, to permit this independence of initiative, and this indifference to 136 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL the public good and to the rights of the children to continue as a part of the educational system. Hence the State must take a hand in fostering enterprise and producing conditions whereby it becomes the interest and the desire of the com- munities to bring educational endeavor up to the proper standard of excellence and perfection. To do this means that the State must initiate some system of co-operation and helpful supervision whereby there will be more local expenditure, higher educational ideals, and more positive prog- ress. This can be done by making the educational revenue have a State source, as well as a local school-district source, and requiring certain definite conditions of improvement in order that the com- munity may be granted the revenue derived from the State source. The development of the right spirit, the comprehending of the greatness of the undertaking, the necessity for notable talent in the teaching, the demand for better quality of in- struction for the children in school — all these, and even more, can be secured if the State becomes a real force in educational propaganda. The Minimum Standard. — Popular demand for teachers of any standard, without regard to edu- cational preparation and fitness, in order to supply these country schools with teachers authorized to receive public money for their services, has pro- THE DEMONSTRATION SCHOOLS 137 duced laws that permit the issuing of licenses to persons whose qualifications are too limited to give proper results. There can never be a better country school until there is actual provision for a truly competent and scholarly teacher as well as such supervision as will prevent any but the most effective from holding such positions of trust and honor. The State could put an end to this by enforcing a better standard wherever the State funds are granted as a subsidy and thus help these local communities to help themselves. Demonstration. — It is not to be expected that every school district would at once co-operate with the State in introducing the new plan. There would be doubts concerning the practicability and the success of the undertaking in many localities, and it would be necessary to show by actual demon- stration that a better course of study, a better teacher, and a better opportunity are worth the while. This situation requires that certain demon- stration schools be organized and maintained in each county, such localities being selected as are the most aggressive, the most enterprising, and the most ambitious for improvement in educa- tional endeavor. When the demonstration has been made, when the results are shown, when the masses are satisfied, then there will be a local will- ingness to undertake a higher standard and to 138 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL have a more efficient school. There is still another problem that must be recognized. The number of teachers that are now prepared to undertake these greater things successfully is quite limited. Agriculture, home economics, and other modern studies can find a place in the schools only by an actual acceptance that has been secured by demon- stration and success. Without proper teachers, without right modifications of the course of study, without careful inspection and supervision, even the best scheme would fail of being proved as either beneficial or desirable. XXI CO-OPERATION The Weakness of Isolation. — The most difficult thing for country school districts to learn is the importance of the principle of co-operation. This is due to the fact that in almost all respects they are independent as a unit and have learned to de- pend upon themselves in everything that touches the life and the business of their people. The life of the farmer is equally isolated and independ- ent. He relies upon no one in particular as long as he remains out of debt. He is under obligation to no one for his prosperity, his success, or his effi- ciency. This very independence gives him a valu- able self-reliance that is worth much to his home, his vocation, and his career, but it also gives him a self-assurance in regard to public policies and public endeavors that is a weakness rather than strength and that may betray ignorance rather than intelligence. This self-assurance may lead him to think that he is more capable in conducting educational affairs than the expert, educated man, and that, in fact, such matters as carrying out 139 140 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL school plans can be readily and successfully accom- plished by laymen. It is extremely difficult for those in country life to realize their limitations or to recognize that there are disadvantages as well as advantages in an independent environment. The Results of Isolation. — There are other ev- idences of these limitations in the pity that a farmer usually feels for his city acquaintances and the contempt that he frequently has for their man- ner of life, their good clothing, and their manners. He commonly assumes that these things are evi- dences of affectation, stilted pride, or ignorant poverty rather than the genuine expression of culture or character-training. He speaks dispar- agingly of the grasping spirit shown in business life, of the sparseness of the food served on city tables at meals, and of the supreme appreciation that city people exhibit as regards town and city life and town and city customs. In all this he is in some respects right and in other respects wrong. He is wrong when he thinks that people who live in the city or town prefer the life they follow because of its ease, its short hours, its lack of sacrifices, and its clean occupations. He fails to recognize that men follow certain occupations because of their individual qualifications, their interest in certain kinds of activities, and their particular capability to do well the things they CO-OPERATION 141 undertake to do. He is right when he thinks that such people do not know much about the problems and the responsibilities of farming, and may not be able to appreciate the intelligence demanded, the skill needed, or the wisdom expended, in leading a successful agricultural life. These mis- understandings are mutual, as both sides to the discussion have much to learn and much to realize before they fully recognize the privileges that an environment can confer. The Country and the Town. — There are native differences between the people of the country and of the town that have largely come from the in- fluences of environment. The life in the city or the town is made up of so many occupations, is composed of so many varied experiences, is de- veloped by so many relations of dependence, that co-operation and exchange of ideas and notions become a necessity. This very compulsory con- dition of co-operation gives a breadth of view and an expansion of interest that secures the con- ducting of public affairs on a broader scope and with a deeper purpose than would otherwise be done. It is not the carpenters alone that make the people of a town, nor the merchants alone, nor the manufacturers alone, nor the professional men alone. These and many other persons following diverse industries and occupations make up the 142 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL life, the needs, and the wishes of the community. Hence government receives more attention and makes more expenditure in proportion to wealth in the city than in the country. Compare city street improvements with country road improve- ments, city lawns and parks with equivalent coun- try endeavors, city homes with country homes, and it will be found that mixed occupations produce more discrimination as to taste and as to stand- ards of public policy because of comparison and competition. For the same reason the schools of the cities and towns surpass those of the country. Their better school-houses, better equipment, bet- ter salaries to teachers, their sending their children to school more months in the year or more years in the course are not due to having more money, comparatively speaking, or more need of educa- tional training, but to having learned the principle of co-operation, and to applying it to the securing of aims and objects that could not otherwise be attained. Their lack of independence, their need to depend upon the help of others for their suc- cess, their desire to attract business and trade to build up their prosperity, their application to the working out of endeavors that indicate progress and improvement — are all consequences of the spirit of co-operation rather than of greater intel- ligence, efficiency, or capability. CO-OPERATION 143 Educational Progress. — The country school is what it is because of its isolation and because it is patronized by people of one occupation alone and because these people do not feel seriously the need of a progress and of an improvement that they would plainly recognize if they were in daily con- tact with people of entirely different occupations and ideals. The country school will become what it is able to become in all its greatness and its usefulness whenever the theory of isolation is abandoned and a theory of co-operation is adopted. It can become even better than the city school when the country people fully realize that there is more reason for their life to be richer in intel- lectual and social opportunities than is the life of the dweller in the city or the town. Educational progress depends, therefore, more upon a change of attitude, upon a broadening of experience, and upon an enlargement of the prospects of the in- dividual rather than on legislation, supervision, or inspection. This truth is shown in the success of the boys and girls of the country who leave their environment, take advantage of an improved education and training, and enter upon activities that demand the highest judgment, the broadest scholarship, and the greatest strength. They do not stand second to those born in the city in polit- ical, professional, or business life, as their biogra- 144 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL phies plainly show. This is largely due to their physique and to the intense training that they had upon the farm, to their capability as workers, and to their surplus energy. The Larger Unit. — This condition makes a larger unit than the local country school district an ab- solute essential, if co-operation is to have a fair chance in training and developing the model Amer- ican citizen. There must be a getting away from provincialism and from separateness of life and from isolated experience in training, if there is not finally to appear in America the peasant class and the patrician class — a country-bred man and a city-bred man — a condition of civilization that will repeat the experiences of the nations of Europe and of Asia. The larger this school unit can ser- viceable be, the more it will bring together the people of all occupations and all experiences; the greater the opportunity for the children of the country and of the city to sit together in the same school-room and meet in competition on the same playground, the more they will be able to measure capability and application; the broader and more general the knowledge obtained by the instruction in agriculture, the mechanical arts, and the gen- erally accepted course of study for all, the more will appreciation of manhood grow and the more valuable will be the education obtained. Only by CO-OPERATION 145 enlargement of the unit of organization, so as to combine the efficiencies of town and country through all classes of workers in these great move- ments in civilization, can the higher educational results be realized. The Modern Slogan. — The key to all advance- ment in industry, in professional careers, in church, in state, and in school is expressed by the single word co-operation. The farmer needs to co-operate with men in other callings even to get to be a prom- inent and useful citizen himself; he needs to feel his dependence upon the handmaids of civiliza- tion, the church, the school, and government, in order to realize fully his own importance as a factor in progress and success; he must give time and money and energy to the work that has to be done for the common good, in order to have the full benefits of prosperity for himself and for his family; and, finally, he must recognize his place as a maker and developer of civilization's best aims and objects, recognizing that all these great things are absolutely impossible in this great country unless he makes his full contribution as a worker and as a citizen. XXII THE PROPER UNIT IN SCHOOL ORGANIZATION The Purposes. — What makes the proper unit in school organization depends upon the purpose the unit selected is to serve and not upon any other reason. There is a unit that is determined by the convenience of attendance, another unit that de- pends upon the sufficiency of financial support that can be guaranteed, another unit that implies that there can be sufficient patronage to guaran- tee economy of cost of maintenance, and, finally, another unit that is regulated by the need of effi- ciency of administration and supervision. All these elements in school organization need to be com- prehended and to be realized if the undertaking is to rank as a creditable success. Too many country schools have the unit of con- venience of attendance, but are entirely lacking in financial support, sufficient patronage, and ade- quate supervision. This is a condition that pre- vents efficiency and economy, and gives in return no adequate results for the investments made. The Officers. — The smaller and less important the country school district, the more its organiza- 146 THE PROPER UNIT IN ORGANIZATION 147 tion is decided by the matter of convenience alone, the larger the number of officials that are required to conduct and organize these schools. Here is found a territory two or three miles square with three school directors, a secretary, and a treasurer to maintain the organization, select the one teacher, purchase the fuel and supplies for one room, keep up the repairs, buy the equipment, visit the school, maintain legal discipline, and pay the teacher for her services. Frequently there are more school officials than there are pupils in regular attendance, and there is more difficulty in getting the legal busi- ness properly transacted than is true in any other kind of public affairs. On the face of things this over-organization is ridiculous and useless, as it contributes nothing to the excellence of the schools and actually prevents the necessary work from be- ing done. This plan is popular because it gives so many electors an office and because it shows that local men are capable of conducting all the local business. The Taxing Unit. — Possibly from a scientific and economic point of view the taxing unit is the more important problem to be solved, as on this, after all, depend the real possibilities of success or fail- ure. Many present-day tax units are incapable or unwilling to raise enough money to make an efficient school an actual possibility. The country 148 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL school is often doomed to helplessness, uselessness, and extravagance because the salary is too small to provide a competent teacher. No genuinely competent, self-respecting teacher can afford to accept employment at too low a rate of remunera- tion. To-day the small country school districts could have pronounced success if they were in- creased in size until there was a full number of pupils in each school for each teacher employed. Such a combination would take the total amount of money they now raise for support and give it to fewer teachers of better qualifications and ex- perience. In many respects the best taxing unit is the county, as such an area of territory would give adequate financial support for the mainte- nance of all the schools that the school popula- tion needs and at the same time do the work re- quired in a most economical way. The Supervising Unit. — Inspection, supervision, and expert management are absolutely essential in any work as complex and difficult as is public education. The value of expertness of direction is appreciated by every enterprise that has its activ- ities scattered and accomplished by many persons. Supervision is an actual necessity to a properly managed business, and without it there is waste, extravagance, disaster, and failure, since incompe- tence and disorganization will predominate where THE PROPER UNIT IN ORGANIZATION 149 not avoided and prevented. Supervision of schools is impossible unless it includes a reasonable terri- tory and provides opportunity for frequent and sympathetic contact with pupils and teachers. The right supervising unit depends, therefore, upon the amount of work to be done, upon the number of teachers and pupils that are to be encouraged and assisted, upon the variety and kind of services and activities that are assigned. The more that is ex- pected, the more that is authorized, the more that is permitted, the smaller must be the mileage to be travelled and the number of schools to be su- pervised. The county unit in supervision is not a possibility, provided one superintendent is as- signed the task of assisting the teachers and im- proving the schools. The township unit is not large enough to give opportunity for the best per- sons to be appointed as superintendents. The only way to decide such a problem is to use good judgment and make these units conform to what judgment and reason dictate. The Community Unit. — What constitutes a proper community unit depends upon the privi- leges that exist in organization to bring a group of people together systematically and secure the right use of friendly co-operation. When this limit has been determined, then the patronage of a single elementary school is a known quantity and 150 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL a school-house can be satisfactorily located to supply proper facilities for the great variety of community activities and needs. When public roads are improved and transportation is made easier and quicker, then the possible area of a com- munity unit expands. If walking is the form of transportation that must be used to assemble the pupils and the people, then the community is small indeed. When wagons and carriages become com- mon conveyances the boundaries of a community proportionately increase. When automobiles and conveyances of a more rapid kind become com- mon the community unit can be very large indeed. It must be recognized that the advent of the trol- ley-car and the automobile has changed decidedly the size of the community unit for large portions of the United States, and as a consequence their school problems are to be best solved on a similar scale of management and policy. The Fundamental Situation. — It is evident to any student of the country-school problem that its solution depends very largely upon coming to a sensible, business adjustment of the whole ques- tion of practicable and serviceable units for the various business relations that need to be con- ducted. There is no necessity for these units to be organized on a compromise basis by assum- ing that the best unit for all will be one in which THE PROPER UNIT IN ORGANIZATION 151 the boundaries of the community unit, the super- vising unit, and the taxing unit must be one and the same. The work of levying taxes, of distrib- uting money for the support of the schools, of em- ploying teachers, and of directing the work in prog- ress does not need to be managed by an identical set of officials. In fact there are good reasons for thinking that it would be better and more certain as to efficiency if there were a division of labor and of authority in regard to these highly important transactions. In doing this the province of the teacher, of the superintendent, of the local board of directors, and of the officers of each unit pro- vided could be greatly enlarged and responsibility could be placed without any detriment to the tax-payers or to the schools. These functions of government are widely different; these factors in educational progress are decidedly prominent and important, while the working out of the relations of service and of endeavor will complete the re- quirements of the present age. Without this ap- propriate solution all is chaos, all is extravagance, and all is weakness and incapability. XXIII STANDARDIZATION The Sentiment. — There is no more dominant sentiment among present-day educators than that for the desirability and the possibility of the stand- ardization of schools. This has come from an at- tempt to determine the quality and the quantity of work to such an exact degree that educational endeavor may be so unified that a pupil may be able to pass from the lowest to the highest grade of public-school work in a systematic and satis- factory way without loss of time or effort. Defini- tions of everything connected with schools have been attempted, the scope of the application of the definitions has been prescribed, while the province and the purpose of education of all kinds have been designated and outlined. These notions are largely formal and sometimes inconsequential, yet they have been treated as fundamental and vital, being given attention far beyond any possible results that they can secure. The sentiment origi- nated in an attempt to fill in the gap that existed between the common public school and the col- lege. So long as the academy was the fitting school 152 STANDARDIZATION 153 for the college, this kind of secondary school had its standards determined by the requirements of the college, but when the public secondary school was founded the public demand did not feel satis- fied with the fitting school as an end, and hence public secondary education became identified with many other aims and purposes and the problem of standardization became imperative. The ex- act kind of scholarship needed for college en- trance became the question of college faculties, and the exact limits of education to be given in the regular popular branches was approximately determined. The Lower Grades. — When the high school had been reasonably standardized according to the limits prescribed, it was found that it was still necessary to organize and determine the limits of the so-called grammar grades so that the high school could have properly prepared entrance pu- pils for the work assigned. Likewise the primary grades were classified and planned and organ- ized until they were also standardized and uni- fied by such systematic courses that a balanced education seemed unable to be avoided. This same scheme of planning courses of study has pre- vailed in the colleges, in the universities, and in the professional schools to such an extent that the very day, and even the very hour, of the in- 154 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL struction in all varieties of school work has been determined and designated with special exactness. In some respects these conditions have been ac- cepted by custom and put into force. In other respects statutes have been passed by legislatures and a fixed status of systematic education has been decreed. The Country School. — Amid all this commotion of developing and determining systems, methods, and plans of conducting schools in towns and cities, as well as in colleges and universities, it has been impossible to standardize the country school. In these schools the teacher has been the authority that determined the course of study, that assigned the work to be prepared, that de- cided when the work had been completed, and even when a new study should be begun, or when any portion of it was so satisfactorily mastered as to permit the next kind of work to be undertaken. When the teacher did not properly manage the pro- motion and transfer the pupils from class to class as the parents deemed desirable or satisfactory, then the parents solved the problem by their own standards, purchased new books for the children, and decided that promotion had taken place. The impression might be obtained by the careless ob- server that this kind of school management was extremely faulty and that it could not make for STANDARDIZATION 155 the real progress of the pupils, yet investigation will show that good judgment usually prevailed, that a prudent, conservative policy generally dom- inated the action, and that promotion and transfer were not the hidden indeterminate chaotic prob- lems that certain leaders in a community might think. The Teacher as a Force. — It is a prominent fact that the teacher in such a situation is a mighty force in a country school and that the capability and the efficiency possessed are able to bring more definite results in a short time than any of the highly organized and standardized systems can show. In the country school it is not necessary to wait for the semester time to come around to take a new step in the line of progress; it is not neces- sary to mark time and supplement work to pre- vent the arrival at a station of accomplishment before the calendar designates the time that the sun crosses the equator; it is not necessary to keep every subject of study so abreast with every other subject of study that the paper curriculum could be justified for its existence. The freedom of the teacher, the opportunity to do the best pos- sible all the time, the privilege of taking advan- tage of interest and enthusiasm and thus push forward to immediate success — these are the op- portunities of the country teacher that can make 156 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL efficiency reasonably certain and success an actual realization. It is for such reasons as this that the teacher must be the main consideration, that his qualifications and spirit and adaptability must be given great weight, in order that the prospects of the country school may not be taken away by in- difference or neglect. Almost everything depends upon the resourcefulness of the teacher, upon the quality of his character, upon his appreciation of the children and of their future development, and upon the growth they must show through the in- struction and training they receive. The Other Side. — There is another side to this question that is highly important in an economical and business sense that must not be overlooked. It must be conceded that there is large necessity for a reasonable and considerate standardization of the country school. Some things that are useful and some things that are useless are found in instruction. These must be differentiated and the valuable conserved. There is no time that can be wisely given for the learning of any alleged knowledge that does not possess real and helpful value. Almost every study that is found in the country school is too much controlled by tradition and custom. Almost every one is loaded with information and work that could be omitted from the assignment made to pupils without STANDARDIZATION 157 any loss to the pupil's efficiency or scholarship. Almost every one is lacking in modern applica- tions or definite practicality. All the essential elements of education should be standardized and systematized. The text-books should be reduced to the real and the practical; the useful and the developing should be permitted even when not found in the books that are in use, while the true and the necessary should dominate all management and all instruction. The Present Need. — That this standardization should be secured, and that it should be brought about by the most comprehensive minds of the present age, ought to be accepted as a fact. That such a right solution would be an untold blessing to every country school the wise and the intelli- gent already know. That it is no small problem to accomplish every intelligent individual who has thought about it recognizes. That the progress of this practical age awaits the solution of the greater problem, while its day of accomplishment is postponed for the easier and more attractive tasks of legislation and supervision, is a true condi- tion in every part of national and State adminis- tration of education as existing to-day. Much of this difficulty is due to mistaken con- ceptions of what education is doing and what edu- cation should undertake to do as held by the 158 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL masses of the people. They commonly think of school work as having a special money value to its possessor rather than a special personal value to the individual success of him who gains it. They sacrifice for their children, under the impression that the knowledge thus obtained will count for much in the years to come and will insure them power, peace, and plenty. Even educators them- selves put trust in the years given to study rather than in the actual mental accomplishments ob- tained by study; they accept more the philosophy of complete training than they do the reality of complete training; they urge the competency of formal knowledge and formal discipline over and beyond the competency of useful knowledge and effective discipline. Too often they ridicule the idea of actual efficiency in personality and in char- acter, forgetting that it is the doing of things, the thinking of things, and the developing of things that has made progress actual and an improved civilization possible. Education to be genuine and complete in results should not be purely cultural and speculative, even if such a plan is com- mended by notable scholars, since it is equally essential that mankind be strong in the practical- ity and the adaptability which guarantees food, shelter and clothing to the human family. XXIV THE COURSE OF STUDY Fundamentals. — What should constitute the proper course of instruction and training for the growth and the development of a human life has been the great problem of all nations that have had a place in civilization. These fundamentals have had the greatest variation, have shown the most remarkable results, and have produced special conditions that indicate the importance of the problem to the twentieth century. Chinese edu- cation was noted for its narrow circle of ideas, for its perpetuation of fixed customs, for its encourage- ment of outward morality and ceremony, and for its opposition to progress and change of every kind. Hindoo education was noted for its aver- sion to physical exertion, for its ideal of physical happiness in eating, drinking, and sleeping, for its lack of a conception of a personal God, for its recog- nition of religion as a set of puerile observances, and for its limitation of development to the caste in which the individual was born. Hebraic education was noted for its nationality of type, for its reli- ance upon individual development as distinguished 159 160 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL from instruction, for its training of the disposition, the manners, and the habits through both thought and feeling, for its conception of the rights, duties, and obligations of the individual in his relation to society, and for its acceptance as real and personal of the one true God, Jehovah of Hosts. Egyptian education was noted for its superiority in practi- cality, for the utilitarian tendency of its culture, for its absorption and adoption of the kinds of knowledge and culture that were found in other nations, for its world-wide character, and for its attainment in the mechanic arts and agriculture. Greek education was noted for its admiration for the physical, the heroic, the artistic, and the aesthetic. It sought supremacy and leadership through philosophy, government, and war. It trained the intellect, inspired the personality, and developed the patriotism of the race, so that mu- tual improvement was secured through hearty friendship and profound scientific culture. Ro- man education was noted for intense practicality in training every youth for a definite calling, for success in agriculture, arms, politics, law, and oratory, and for ambition to accumulate wealth and to acquire power. The art of war was learned in the field; politics, law, and oratory were learned in the forum, courts, and senate; while eloquence was acquired by the most diligent effort and the THE COURSE OF STUDY 161 most assiduous training. American education is noted for its scientific basis, for its experimental and investigating character, for its manifold types of undertaking, for its conception of the impor- tance of citizenship and efficiency, for its univer- sality and its philanthropic management, for its popularity and its accepted adequacy, and for its notion of harmonious development whereby the physical, mental, and moral character of the child should be fully developed. The interest in edu- cation that exists everywhere in the United States, the enthusiasm that is always manifest as regards its necessity and its great value, the investments that are made to have its benefits reach all of the people without regard to their financial standing or prospects, are manifestations of possibilities of progress that are marvellous indeed. The Country School. — With the conceptions of the fundamentals that are found in the motives and the purposes of modern elementary education, there can exist no negative status for the country school. It is an educational institution that is founded and organized and conducted to communi- cate the fundamental knowledge and the thorough training that this present age accepts as essential to the welfare of the race. It is a limited institu- tion, because it deals with the child during the im- mature and untrained time of its life and because 162 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL even these years are few and difficult to use or to control on account of the many natural and unappreciated interferences that are constantly preventing results. The function of the country school is a broad one if its intentions are actually realized, but it commonly becomes a narrow one because of restricted environment, physical im- possibilities, and decided hindrances that business interests and vocational prejudices allow to exist. The reaching of complete ideals, the appreciating of the notable possibilities of culture and training, the true valuation of citizenship and business ca- pacity, the importance of industrial life to civiliza- tion, and the grandeur and efficiency of a well- trained character for all without distinction are conditions that are yet only partially realized in the country school's perfection and expansion. The Programme of Studies. — Custom has made a certain curriculum almost universal. There are good reasons for this common agreement since the programme of studies taught must conform to the fundamental knowledge that civilization decides is essential to the practical training of the individual. It is to be recognized that every kind of civiliza- tion has had its peculiarities and its special require- ments, and that the changes or improvements that have appeared in such civilization have been re- flected in the courses of study offered in the THE COURSE OF STUDY 163 schools. Educational organization and manage- ment are always conformable to the standards, ideals, and ambitions of the times they serve. In the same way, the present-day course of study found in the American schools is a consequence of the real public needs that the masses who support and patronize the schools feel to be important. No branch of study can have any patronage un- less it is desired as knowledge by those who enroll in such schools, and hence the modifications that appear are only those that originate in public de- mand. The country school makes a special place on its programme of studies for certain branches of learning because of their universal acceptance by the masses. These are English language (read- ing, spelling, penmanship, literature, grammar, and composition), arithmetic, geography, history, physiology, hygiene, and vocal music. The only differences that exist concerning these studies as suitable for elementary education are included in such considerations as the scope, the time of as- signment, and the quantity and quality of subject matter that each should occupy. Some of them are given extraordinary prominence because of their popularity and the assumption that their in- formation guarantees special personal capability; some of them are denied the attention which their training deserves because they are so largely de- 164 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL pendent upon the gifts and the qualities of the teacher, while others are simply given a place be- cause of their conventional and appreciated char- acter as training factors of a mental and practical kind. In addition to these fundamental lines of study, there is a growing tendency to increase the country-school programme by attempting to give practical elementary instruction in one or more of the following studies: agriculture, home econom- ics (sewing and cooking), manual training, physical training, drawing, and nature study (plants, ani- mals, and natural phenomena). The Main Problem. — The chief difficulty that arises in the work assigned the country school is that economic conditions seem to compel that persons be employed as teachers who can afford to accept the small incomes that are obtainable by the system as legally provided. The country school-teacher has a province that demands su- perior capability, competency, and efficiency in- stead of limited scholarship, narrow culture, and meagre experience. The branches of scholarship that are to be taught have special value. The knowledge they contain demands complete mas- tery. The training they give, if they are efficiently handled and studied, cannot be considered as an inadequate education. In these fundamental sub- jects are found the kinds of preparation that are THE COURSE OF STUDY 165 essential to success in further progress in educa- tion, that give a practical basis for a business life, and that equip a person for creditable competency in other callings. The First in Importance. — The training in the use of the English language is the first result to be sought in the maintenance of a country school. This is no small undertaking for the pupil or for the teacher. The difficulties to be met are so nu- merous and so indeterminate that many times it is a question of judgment rather than a question of fact as to what should be done. This is caused by the condition in which a living language like English must be found. There is much that is in a transition state and that has changed from gen- eration to generation. English is not standardized as to spelling, as to pronunciation, as to diction, or as to application. The spelling that should always be preferred by the school is that form which is simplest and most nearly phonetic. Every diffi- culty that can be eliminated should be given such treatment without hesitation, because every ir- regularity should be rejected by the teacher as not contributing to success in the universal education of the masses. Then the pronunciation that is appropriate differs very greatly among even the well educated. This is due to the fact that there are many minor dialectic distinctions with special 166 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL characteristics that exist in different parts of a country and sometimes even in different parts of the same State. The dictionary as an authority does not relieve this situation, because the vowel sounds are frequently quite differently pronounced by the experts when they are themselves from dif- ferent colleges or different States. The diction- aries are edited to give word precision for the standard of pronunciation. Since this is not the standard that is used in reading and speaking, the teacher is obliged to depend upon his own knowl- edge and training in determining sentence preci- sion — the style of language that is used in the schools. Formal English. — In like manner, English gram- mar is lacking in standardization. Every author of a text-book in grammar uses such a nomenclat- ure as he sees fit. This makes confusion as regards the technical terms describing the tenses, the cases, the parts of the sentence, and many other charac- teristics that make teaching English grammar spe- cially difficult. Then diction, the meaning of words, is so variable, so numerous in applications, and so different in usage that the interpretation of thought is a profoundly difficult undertaking for even the best informed and the more widely read. The distinction in literature, the novelties in prose and poetry, the many meanings that THE COURSE OF STUDY 167 words can convey — all indicate that teaching the mother tongue with credit and with accuracy is not to be expected of the novice or the uninformed. Practical English. — Yet, after all, the element- ary school must stand or fall on its ability to teach its pupils to be ready, accurate users of the mother tongue. On this depends all the success that is to be secured in teaching most of the other branches in the elementary curriculum, as text-books are to be studied, verbal instruction is to be given, and written exercises are to be prepared to comply with the methods that must be used in conducting a modern school. Writing English does not pre- cede the acquirement of readily and successfully using oral English. Talking, reading, committing selections to memory, reciting, and other forms of expression are preliminary to composition. The obtaining of information, the making of observa- tions, the comprehending of how to say things properly, the competency in talking, reading, recit- ing, and discussing are absolutely essential to a reasonable beginning in writing English. Before written composition should be undertaken as a task, oral composition should have been specially developed. The themes that are to be treated by description should be very completely and thor- oughly developed and expressed in oral form before any success should be expected in the written form. 168 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL This oral composition must be given extraordinary attention. Pupils must be trained to present their thoughts in a consecutive, deliberate, perfected oral composition, in order to be trained in effective thinking and in readiness of use of the right words in the right relations to have any personal fitness to undertake successful written composition. Rhetoric. — English grammar is for the benefit of the critical instinct as to the proper use of words in right relationships; English rhetoric is likewise a kind of study that gives a critical basis for cor- rection and improvement of composition. Neither grammar nor rhetoric, however well mastered, will make a pupil a ready talker or writer. This fact emphasizes the necessity for great emphasis upon the realities of English instruction, and places the main requirement as to education and literacy upon the proper and efficient teaching of the Eng- lish language. When this is really done, then geog- raphy, history, physiology, and all other informa- tion studies become a joy and a success in school work because the mastery of the language gives opportunity to make real progress. Mathematics. — Arithmetic has a province in ele- mentary education and training that is all its own. It calls for different mental activity from that re- quired by language, and in its higher and problem forms trains the judgment and the reason. It has THE COURSE OF STUDY 169 also a language of its own, as it carries the means of expressing thinking and is universal in its char- acter, being capable of being taught through all the leading languages of the age. It is a science in that it is governed by law and order and is bound together by principles and intimate relations that give much breadth and depth to thought and en- able conclusions to be reached that are definite and accurate. It is valuable in its concrete as well as its abstract form, and develops powers of comparison, of investigation, and of coming to conclusions that mathematical studies alone pos- sess. In the more primary phases of this subject, perception, observation, and memory together are able to master the work that is given. This is rec- ognized in the learning of the more simple forms of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and divi- sion. Many of these exercises are the learning of a mathematical language and consist of the com- mitting of tables and combinations of numbers so that the repetition of these may be made almost automatically in after use. It is thus with the multiplication table, with elementary fractions and factoring, with the fundamentals of compound numbers, and the minor applications of decimals. Memory exercises, mechanical operations, and concrete examples are appropriate for the educa- tion of a child before judgment, reason, or even 170 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL conceptual power are shown by mental develop- ment in more than the most rudimentary form. The mechanical operations of arithmetic are at- tractive to pupils in the primary grades. They like the graphic representation, the forms of cal- culation, and the accuracy of the results, and they acquire the foundations for higher work with ra- pidity and with perfection that show their hearty appreciation of its usefulness. By making proper selections of work that are given in arithmetical text-books, the processes of calculation as taught in the fundamental rules, in fractions, in compound numbers, and other parts of the book where proc- esses are the important thing to be mastered, rapid and satisfactory progress can be made even when the age and the mental development of the pupils would not enable tasks to be performed where judgment and reasoning must be a large factor. The Higher Types. — Judgment and reason are mental powers that require time to appear and to mature. They constitute thinking involving such abstract relations that they belong to the mature mind, not to the child mind. They are not de- pendent on good teaching, on correct methods, or on systematic instruction. They cannot be manufactured by effort or by training, as they are phenomena of human development that ex- THE COURSE OF STUDY 171 pand and show capability when the proper age has been reached. When this kind of maturity has come, judgment and reason assert themselves, thinking becomes the preferred process of action, and problems of all kinds are desirable exercises to give these faculties a chance for service. Even if the primary child withdraws from school with- out having learned more than the processes and systems of calculations taught by arithmetic, he is better off in later years when his higher mental faculties appear than if his teachers had required him to study his arithmetic in the order commonly given by the text-books where processes of calcu- lations and problems to be solved follow each other in regular order for each division of the sub- ject. Other Studies. — Information studies, such as geography, history, and physiology, are compara- tively easy to master, if the teacher has ample knowledge of them and the pupils have enough acquaintance with English to understand the printed page. The teacher's acquaintance with these subjects of the course of study should be extensive and thorough. It should depend on many sources, and include many more phases of the topics considered than the text-book could give. In no way can a teacher's influence be more strengthened than by the additional interesting 172 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL information that the supplementing of the text- book permits. These informational subjects are valuable because of the outlook they give, because they are preliminary to a life study of more ad- vanced lines, and because they give breadth of view to every one who pursues them in a success- ful school. XXV THE TEACHER SUPPLY Quantity. — The present system of organizing country schools provides twice as many school dis- tricts as are needed to successfully care for the children that are enrolled in the schools. This fact alone demands a teacher supply that is impossible to provide, since the salaries are too small to give support to a capable teacher and the work to be done is too little to occupy the time or the energy of an ambitious teacher. If business methods were adopted, the actual number of schools organized would depend upon the actual number of pupils that would enroll and upon the actual amount of work that the schools require to be done. Every good teacher wants to have a good-sized school, every good school must contain enough pupils to give interest and enthusiasm to the work, and every satisfactory management puts schools upon a busi- ness basis and insists upon true economy. Any other method of conducting public affairs is con- trary to an honest public policy. Quality. — Good business judgment also requires that schools should be conducted to obtain quality 173 174 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL of work as well as quantity of work. Expenditures for educational endeavor should be wisely made, because if such undertakings are not successful, then the expenditures are actual waste and not investment. The law of supply and demand should apply to such business enterprises, and if there is no demand there should be no supply. Despite these principles of business, country schools are often furnished by law and by the plans of the system where there is no real demand. Money is spent that is in the treasury, more to get it ex- pended than to bring any real returns for it. Such methods of management make quality of scholar- ship and training unnecessary in the teacher, and also make impossible any superior quality of in- struction and training for the pupils. Such ad- ministration of government violates the principles of respectable management, even if it does not violate the law that is on the statute books. For these reasons there is an inordinate demand for a large supply of teachers of meagre qualifications, in order to provide for weak and poorly managed school districts where the greatest effort is em- ployed in spending the money of the people rather than in devoting it to securing valuable returns for such expenditure. The Better Teacher. — The kind of teacher that is positively needed in a country school is one that THE TEACHER SUPPLY 175 is thoroughly conversant with country occupa- tions, country opportunities, and country life. The work that is being done by the people requires the best mental qualifications in the workers to secure success. The homes need an intellectual atmos- phere to inspire the children to the right valua- tion of the school. All things being equal, the country-born, the country-bred person that is lib- erally educated and thoroughly trained will ac- complish the most for the people in general and the pupils in particular. The notion that certain kinds of scholastic education without regard to these other things is all that is necessary to pre- pare a person to be a competent country teacher is a positive mistake. There are more things neces- sary to make a competent teacher than the knowl- edge of certain elementary and secondary branches. Plans of Training. — It is evident that some or- ganized effort must be adopted to educate and train country teachers, if the needed supply for even a well-organized and economical system is to be maintained. As long as the way into the voca- tion is through some examining system, the real difficulties will not be met, as the examining sys- tem will be kept at such a low standard that a supply of efficient teachers will not be obtained. As long as the way is through graduating from a regular high-school course, with certain elementary 176 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL and didactic studies to count for preparation, the supply is not sought in the right place, because high schools as now patronized will prepare city residents for teaching and they will leave the coun- try and go to the city as rapidly as the slightest opportunity offers, even for less salary and for less appreciation of their services than they might be granted in the country. It is rare, indeed, that the city-bred will find it possible to adapt them- selves to country life, since they are attracted to a kind of life and society that the country does not possess. Country Teachers' Courses. — If the high schools opened classes for the subjects of study that are required for country teaching and would instruct such persons in such subjects in an intensive and thorough manner and add such other branches as would specially prepare country people for this work, it seems reasonable to suppose that a bet- ter satisfied and a more keenly appreciated class of workers in country schools could be provided. They 1 would have certain necessary knowledge from experience, they would recognize the importance of this knowledge, and they would return to these schools with interest and with enthusiasm and be satisfied to devote themselves arduously to this kind of work if they were granted a suitable income for a permanency. A high-school education in it- THE TEACHER SUPPLY 177 self is in reality no effective preparation for suc- cessful teaching. The fact that many high-school graduates have developed into strong teachers has been due to learning the business in the school of experience and through diligent application rather than through the influence of the high-school studies that they have pursued. Training. — It is common usage that gives a loose meaning to the word training when referring to the preparation of teachers for their work. By train- ing most educational writers and speakers mean formal instruction in school management, in his- tory of education, in methods of teaching, and in mind study. This kind of instruction is beneficial to the practical preparation of a teacher. It may be all that is possible in these days to be done, but yet it is not deserving of being classified as real training in any sense of the word. Real training should mean actual practice in teaching under critical, sympathetic, developing supervision where the school is organized for laboratory purposes and where the teacher in training does the work of instruction. He should be constructively criti- cised and personally directed, so that growth in efficiency, in power, and in freedom of management are positively recognized and secured. The Eng- lish method of requiring those who wish to be licensed as teachers to actually work under the 178 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL direction of a teacher of first-grade qualifications until they have acquired a mastery of themselves and of the mechanism of the conduct of the school and feel at home at the business is a reasonably good solution of the country-school problem of training. These pupil-teachers are thus trained in method, in management, and in self-mastery until they have acquired experience that assures them of reasonable success when they assume charge of a school themselves. At least this much practical contact should be had from the teach- er's stand-point before the entire responsibility of independent service should be permitted. The Experienced Teacher. — This giving the bet- ter and more experienced country school-teachers an enlarged province in the educational system should give them superior rank, a somewhat larger salary, and a more decisive encouragement to grow in efficiency and in personal power as trainers of others. They would be recognized as superior in knowledge, in capability, in manage- ment, and in efficiency in adapting themselves to the special interests, the notable characteristics and the enlarged possibilities of community life. This use of their experience and of their success would develop a class of country teachers that would be encouraged to acquire much more than ordinary scholarship and training; they would be- THE TEACHER SUPPLY 179 come graduates of good schools, and they would make a study of social conditions and of means of betterment that the ordinary regular service as- signed to the single teacher would not give. This employment of the superior teachers to manage model or demonstration schools would be an eco- nomic way to reach a much-needed result in a prac- tical and possible way. The Training Schools. — The organizing of sev- eral normal schools in a State cannot solve the problem beyond that of giving instruction in the branches of scholastic and professional knowledge needed. Actual training in country-school work must be in the country school districts and must be in charge of these expert teachers who have been carefully prepared and trained for their work. There would need to be as many such training or demonstration schools as the necessities of keep- ing up the supply required, and the training work should follow the scholastic study that such pro- spective teachers should have. The high schools are so numerous that they could easily establish a proper course of study to give the instruction side of this preparation. They could become little normal schools in reality for this laudable purpose, and they would secure a patronage from the coun- try people that would rapidly furnish the supply of students needed for the course in training that 180 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL should be given in the demonstration schools. This plan is feasible; it is easily organized and financed. State subsidy could test the plan very easily, and the corps of teachers found in the country schools would be remarkably improved without any loss of time or waste of effort. The Institute. — This plan of teacher training and supply would enable the organization of a county institute for the expert-demonstration school-teachers and a township, or more local, in- stitute for the other teachers. The expert that is in charge of the demonstration training school could conduct these local institutes and local teach- ers' meetings. She could conduct a teachers' read- ing circle where the continued study of the teach- ers could be guided, improved, and encouraged. She could develop such activities in the schools within local reach of this centre as would build up public sentiment, secure public co-operation, bring about better equipment and larger interest in the possibilities to be attained. Under this condition, district supervision would be effective, county supervision would be a masterly occupation, and educational enterprise and activity would be mar- vellously enlarged and conserved. XXVI AGRICULTURE School Expansion. — The primitive elementary school was organized to assist the home to give the rudiments of literacy to the children of a com- munity. For that reason reading, spelling, pen- manship, letter-writing, and arithmetic constituted the assigned curriculum. It was never supposed that the function of the school included the teach- ing of occupations, as it was inferred that all such kinds of knowledge and training belonged ostensi- bly to the home. As a matter of course, this orig- inal conception of what a school might do was modified by experience and by development, since teachers gradually taught other branches of study, and the people also began to ask for other things that they considered the school best organized to give. By an evolutionary process lines of study and teaching were added until the function of the school became the teaching of everything that could be classified as suitable for the education of boys and girls for intellectual, moral, and practical life. The several States have organized systems of elementary education, provided laws governing 181 182 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL the management of such systems, designated offi- cers to conduct such systems, authorized money to be raised to pay the expenses from the public treas- ury, and decided standards of courses of instruc- tion and of qualifications of teachers. To-day the quantity of subject matter that can be taught is so excessive that no elementary school can have the time to satisfactorily accomplish all that is permitted or demanded. Hence the question of elimination has become prominent, the absolutely essential is to be preserved, the extraneous and the unimportant is to be dropped, and room in the school course is to be found for the most desirable, the most useful, and the most important. Vocational Notions. — This expansion of the school has not been confined to the speculative studies alone, but it has also come in the adoption of the vocational studies as at least of secondary importance to the fundamental studies universally accepted. This problem in the city and in the town has been a very complex and profoundly diffi- cult one, because the occupations of the people are so varied. The preparing of a curriculum and of an equipment to handle the trade-school educa- tion for a city community involves great expense. In the multiplicity of things that can be done to develop mechanical skill, the selection of the act- ually important is very much more intricate than AGRICULTURE 183 the layman might think. Then education of a real, substantial, mental character is wanted as a positive result even more than the practical teach- ing of vocations if the school is to fulfil its real function in society. The popular attitude toward these problems is more likely to judge results by the skill shown in occupational lines than it is to conclude that the work accomplished is to be com- mended if well-trained, well-informed minds are shown by the pupils. Manual training is an at- tempt to make vocational activities educational rather than to give a vocational bias to the pu- pils. It is planned to give the eye, the hand, and the muscular system of the pupils such training as to develop in them possibilities that would other- wise be neglected. Manual training does not sat- isfy the vocational ideal of education, for it does not produce expert mechanics or well-equipped workmen of any kind, and does not reach the end of preparing pupils for occupations that they could follow as a life career. Hence it is being rejected in many quarters as not meeting the public demand for complete education and vocational or trade schools are taking its place in the school system. Agriculture. — The country schools are the most favored in regard to vocational education because the patrons of these schools are all producers of one general kind and are all interested in farming and 184 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL farm life. There is, then, not the confusion nor the complexity that exists in the towns and cities, because the people are more homogeneous in occu- pation, more able to unite in a single conception of accomplishment, more harmonious in thought as to their undertakings as a community, and more competent through daily experience to recognize the full value of the results and developments that the vocational work of the school exhibits. These conditions magnify the necessity of the teacher's having abundant qualifications in scientific agri- culture and demonstration work. He must have more in reality than the empirical knowledge that is possessed by the boys and the girls he will teach, and he must be more widely informed in science, art, literature, and mathematics than the men and women of the community he may officially serve. The province of the teacher must command the re- spect and the esteem of the people because of dis- tinct accomplishments, or else the work being done is not valued and the place of leadership attained. The Province of the Study. — Agriculture is a study that is both a science and an art. It demands of those who follow it both studentship to learn the complex science and skill in applying the art to the obtaining of results. It relies upon the soil, the air, the weather, the seasons, and the climate as natural forces to permit results to be accom- AGRICULTURE 185 plished, and yet it masters untoward conditions that may be found in any of these through the wisdom, the learning, and the ingenuity of man, and compels results that science, skill, and experi- ence have made possible. This requires a knowl- edge of the special quality of soils, an ability to determine their constituents, a capability in im- proving them, and an experience in cultivating them that are fundamental to decided success in farming. This does not consist of ordinary knowl- edge such as common men could acquire without special education and training, and yet it is just the kind of knowledge that agriculturists should learn and that they can be taught if they have a properly equipped school with suitable laboratory for such investigation accompanied with a dem- onstration garden or farm where such soil experi- ments can be exhibited for the benefit of all. Plant Life. — Agricultural study also includes a knowledge of the various plants that are cultivated on the farm with such discriminations as show the quality of each plant and the highest standard of its production. This includes the problems of seed, of planting, of cultivating, of harvesting, and of marketing, showing what is profitable, what is superior in type, what utility it shows in service, and what ways can be used to increase quantity and quality. In this way the teacher and the com- 186 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL munity can co-operate to spread the most practical information regarding wheat, corn, oats, barley, rye, vegetables, grasses, and other productions that are common in the section where the school is located. Accompanying such instruction as can be given to the children of the school, the young people that are outside of the school, and the older people who will co-operate to advance the common interests, since the tests can be regularly made in the demonstration garden, the undertaking will have double value to all who participate in the im- provement of the community. Accompanying these things can be a study of the different plants that grow naturally upon the soil and that are a hindrance to proper agricultural success. These weeds can be studied and classi- fied, their extermination taught, their methods of distribution determined, and their prevention as- certained. Undesirable weeds that are likely to be introduced into the farms and that should be known and recognized on their first appearance deserve special attention and consideration. Animal Life. — In a similar way the animals and the animal products should be studied and the better standards determined. This can be done by making use of the live-stock that belongs in the community and that is of the best and high- est grade for production, for farm use, and for AGRICULTURE 187 the market, so that stock-breeding, stock-raising, stock-judging, and stock improvement could re- ceive the attention and the determination that their value to the community deserve. Along with this is the poultry yard and its products, including all the things that should be known about housing, feeding, care, and improvement of the variety of fowls that are profitably produced on the farm. Other Agencies for Interest. — All such informa- tion must have illustration, demonstration, and interpretation to be of practical value, and must be carried to the home and have hearty co-opera- tion there in order to be as effective and as influ- ential as its merits deserve. Many of the things done and taught culminate in a district fair, in which prizes may be given, premiums may be awarded, competition may be encouraged, between pupils of the same age, between families and pa- trons, and between the community and other com- munities. Preparation for this fair could be made the entire year, and the homes and the school could well unite to interest the children in what is profit- able, practicable, and specially successful. It is very remarkable what progress can be made, what a fund of knowledge can be acquired, what prac- tical common-sense can be developed, and what an interest in study and in the characteristics of 188 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL superior farming can be provoked. To reach these desirable ends the different organizations that can be perfected in the community should co-operate, a continuous intellectual atmosphere should be provided, and the welfare, happiness, and educa- tion of all should be secured. The Profit of These Phases. — Education is not a preparation for living sometime in the future. It is real living for every child now. Success is not some future experience that an individual must wait years to enjoy; it is a thing that can be a part of a child's realization every year. Work is not drudgery or unpleasant when it is accompanied by conditions that arouse the interest, improve the zeal, inspire the enthusiasm, and train the power of realization. The conventional education con- ferred by the country school must be so related and combined with country life that the impor- tance of both may be recognized and their use- fulness as co-operating factors appreciated. When these truths are mastered, when their application is secured, when the developments of progress are adopted, then civilization has come to its own and the producing classes will have received their full heritage in the worlds of activity and happiness. XXVII HAPPINESS The Chief End. — Whatever result may be ob- tained by human effort, whatever undertaking may be planned by human wisdom, whatever object may be sought by human experiment and human inquiry, whatever purpose may be fundamental to human sacrifice, whatever success may be secured by human achievement, yet happiness of body, of mind, and of spirit is the chief end of all human attainment. If everything else that man can de- sire is possessed, if every ambition is realized, and every comfort gained, yet without happiness all is in vain and all is lost. Education of every kind and degree is hopeless and helpless so far as hu- man satisfaction, human peace, and human recog- nition is concerned, unless happiness is real, con- stant, and active. To reach this stage is the work of the home, of the school, of the church, and of all civilization. It is an indirect attainment, and yet it is the supreme attainment. It is a conse- quence of having kept the laws of health and hy- giene so far as the physical well-being is concerned; it is a result of having obeyed the laws of mental 189 190 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL development and mental training so far as intel- lectual well-being is concerned; it is an effect of having established righteousness of life, charita- bleness of attitude, and holiness of disposition so far as spiritual well-being is concerned. The Doctrine of Equality. — Human personalities are not equal in any respect. It is not necessary that they should be equal. In fact, there are many reasons why equality would not contribute to the welfare of any one, either in prosperity, success, or happiness. Inequality in personal strength, in personal talent, in personal tendencies, and in per- sonal acquirements and capability is a blessing to the world and to the aims and objects of civiliza- tion. A man is not more of a man of parts or a man of usefulness because he has the special gift of acquiring wealth, or of acquiring scholarship, or of acquiring the skill of an artist, or of display- ing power as an organizer or as a statesman. This condition of variability of talent found among men permits every one to make a valuable con- tribution to society for the benefit of others and thus raise the total accomplishments of civiliza- tion far beyond what would be at all possible for equality to give. This making a contribution to the common good is the duty and the privilege of every individual human being. This recognition of a constant personal debt to society that should HAPPINESS 191 be honorably and fairly paid with pleasure and with sincerity is the key to the solution of most of the conflicts and evil tendencies of civilization. Let every one use his talent for the benefit of others, and his own happiness and success are as- sured. The Doctrine of a Fair Chance. — Education of every kind is dependent upon the doctrine of a fair chance for its proper development and expan- sion. Men will always follow diverse occupations and represent different activities in society. These occupations are all great opportunities if they are carried out to their ultimate conclusions. No ser- viceable occupation that is essential to the prog- ress, the maintenance, or the improvement of the race should be considered as unworthy of human effort. Hence education is not alone for the cler- gyman, the physician, the lawyer, the architect, the engineer, or the school-teacher; it has just as much a place in the enlightening and training of the farmer, the mechanic, the merchant, and the employee of the railway. It is true that these dif- ferent callings in life are different in their gifts, in their output, and in their skill. The problem of education includes the giving to each individual the opportunity to make the best of himself in every way possible, and it is therefore reasonable and right that schools should be maintained for 192 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL the education and the training of all for the high- est station of efficiency in living. It is an error to suppose that the comparison as to the superiority of one work of skill over another is a correct method of measuring the degree of capability of individual efforts. Painting a picture is neither equal nor unequal to inventing an engine. The carving of a marble statue is neither equal nor unequal to the building of a cathedral. Practis- ing law is neither equal nor unequal to manufact- uring. Developing an important work in engi- neering is neither equal nor unequal to making necessary and proper laws in the halls of legisla- tion. Merchandising is neither equal nor unequal to farming. What can be truthfully said that is not complimentary to the accomplishments, the recognitions, and the values involved in every honorable calling that civilization has developed ? The problem of inquiry as to what are fair chances for boys and girls must be solved by the boys and girls themselves, relying upon their talents, their tastes, and their capabilities as guides. The com- mon idea that all that a man needs is a special kind of education to make his career a great suc- cess in that direction is a fallacious one, if it is as- sumed to believe that any person could wisely take such a course in determining his vocation in any special direction that ambition might dictate. HAPPINESS 193 Neither is it to be understood that there is only one special vocation for every person and that if he does not discover that particular specialty his failure is certain. The differences to be found in individuals are not so special as might be inferred, for talents are more general and more universal than such a theory would assert. It is probable that most persons could devote themselves to any one of a dozen callings and obtain creditable re- sults. The staying by the selected calling until it is carried to extraordinary development and suc- cess is the main thing. Selfishness. — The greatest source of unhappi- ness is sordid selfishness. It brings an untoward condition to the most prominent success, because it robs the soul of the spiritual adjustments of generosity, of charity, and of helpfulness that are so essential to an individual's self-development. The man who attains wealth and uses it in an ex- tremely selfish and limited way, as though it be- longed to him and not to society, is miserable, in- deed, because he cannot know what happiness is except as his ideal is gratification of appetite, dis- sipation, or gloating over the earthly accumula- tions he has made for a temporary purpose. The man who has attained great distinction in profes- sional, civic, or national life, and who uses this temporary promotion and power for his own grat- 194 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL ification and prosperity, regardless of the needs of civilization and of the higher and nobler life of society, is a certain candidate for profound depths of unhappiness, because he will gather a harvest of regrets and of abandonment of peace through inheriting the ingratitude of his fellow-men and the ultimate repudiation of his claims for great- ness. The man who would reach success in any voca- tion, and through that success be respected and esteemed by his fellow-men, must become also a great and useful factor in the higher lines of civil- ization's endeavors; he must contribute personally to every end that helps the moral and spiritual betterment of society, and he must have an im- portant part in the amelioration of the ills of man- kind. He must co-operate to the end that pov- erty and sickness and suffering and wickedness may be eliminated, and that prosperity and health and comfort and righteousness may be enthroned. There is enough money, there is enough humanity, there is enough helpfulness, there is enough love, there is enough patriotism in the world, that are wasted, undeveloped, unused, or unappreciated, which, if put into the service of mankind, would make the present day almost a millennium. If only the surplus of these things were properly used, there would be a marvellous revolution in HAPPINESS 195 the aims, the purposes, and the possibilities of society. Personal Character. — Education cannot stop with the material things of life nor with the scholar- ship and learning that the worlds of intellectuality have produced, nor with the humanitarian theories and philosophies of civilization, as its final and complete aim is spirituality of personal character. Life is not alone of the body, nor of the body and mind, but of the body, mind, and spirit. It is comparatively easy to attain the materialistic qual- ities and successes of this prosperous, remarkable world, compared to the attainments in intellect- ual qualities and successes that may be secured by application, industry, and sacrifice. But all of these are petty compared with the attainment of spirituality of personal character. Education and development in the physical realm of humanity can be accomplished in the limited period assigned by nature to the body to grow and to develop. Education and development in the intellectual realm can be accomplished in the limited years as- signed by nature to childhood and youth and early manhood. Education and development in the spiritual personal realm have no limits but those of years of life, of diligent endeavor in the ac- complishing of good for others, and in actual sac- rifices that mean the betterment of mankind. It 196 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL does matter what personal physical habits an in- dividual may acquire; it does matter what per- sonal standards of scholarly usefulness and help- fulness to others he may adopt for his line of ac- tion; it does matter what relationships of personal morality and spirituality of character he may ac- cept as the crowning act of his motive for co-op- eration with God and with man, because on these things will depend what education, as given in the home, in the school, in the church, and in society, can accomplish in the making of a man. XXVIII CONDITIONS AND PROSPECTS The Price of Land. — Happiness among country people is dependent upon the success of the work of the farmer. Agricultural prosperity is essen- tial to put the people in the right spirit to make liberal appropriations of money for the support of the schools. Education needs capital and energy to secure progress. The conditions in country life are not entirely favorable for progress and the remedies for these hindrances are not easy to in- vent or to apply. In many parts of the United States the price of land has increased so rapidly in the past twenty-five years that the land-owners have become capitalists. Their wealth has multi- plied many times through these frequent ad- vances in price, and speculation in land has been very active. This change in the price of land has modified the problems of production of crops and has had the effect of making much farming un- profitable, considering the capital that is invested in the land. The land-owning farmer has become wealthy because of this unearned increment, and at the same time has found his occupation unpro- 197 198 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL ductive in returns, while the tenant farmer has been induced to neglect the proper care of the soils as his financial interests insist that he seek temporary rather than permanent benefit. The High Price of Living.-^-The large price paid for land in making an investment, the desire to make this investment profitable by obtaining fair returns, the decline in the productiveness of the soils through cultivation of crops, the shortage of the crops from year to year in quantity and quality, and the expansion in the population to be supported have contributed collectively to the increase of the price for farm products and have made the support of governmental, social, edu- cational, and family expenses a positively increas- ing burden. The country community has ex- perienced the larger proportion of these financial difficulties, and as a consequence the problems of social, moral, and educational improvement have been gradually enlarged and complicated until they have become the more important questions of the present time. Even with this advancing price for farm products of all kinds the country community has not been progressive and enter- prising because so-called "hard times" have been the regular experience of the people. In addition to this, the shortage of trained farm employees, the advance in the wages that even the untrained CONDITIONS AND PROSPECTS 199 can obtain, and the purchase of expensive neces- sary farm machinery, have added many factors to the conditions that have made farm life un- favorable. Speculation in Land. — The limitations in the total acreage of tillable land, the large amount of capital seeking productive investment, the profits that have been realized in the rise of the price of land, all have contributed to induce capitalists to buy land for business purposes. Experience has shown that their expectations of large profits have been fully realized. All these elements have added to the difficulties surrounding the country school and have had a part in preventing either its normal standardization as an institution or its proper improvement as an agency for the culture and the capability of the people. The systems of taxation have favored also the non-resident in- vestor rather than the resident farmer. The im- provements that the resident farmer makes add to the value of all real property in his neighborhood. His taxes are larger in proportion than those of the non-resident because improved land sells at a higher price than unimproved land. These conditions have enabled individuals to own large tracts of land which they do not live upon, and they have produced also the tenant farmer whose personal interests are not identified permanently 200 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL with any particular community. He is naturally unwilling to pay large taxes upon his own limited resources, and, having the right as an elector to assist in deciding questions of taxation for schools, he prevents any increase of school expenditures. The non-resident landlord is in sympathy with this policy of the tenants, and as a consequence any actual improvement in schools is delayed. In some parts of the farming districts more than forty per cent of the resident electors are tenant farmers. The older the settlements and the more wealthy the land-owners, the larger does this per- centage become. Unless some governmental plan can be devised to improve the conditions of the actual farmers, enabling them to own the farms they conduct, speculation in real estate cannot be avoided, and little if any progress can be realized in country-school education. Progress Hindered. — It is evident that social and fiscal conditions are fundamental to any prog- ress in the education of the masses. It is posi- tive that no law could be passed that will force a community to provide educational facilities if the people do not appreciate or desire them. It is certain that success is not made by supervision or by inspection. The situation requires that all such undertakings be approached indirectly rather than directly. Social and educational surveys CONDITIONS AND PROSPECTS 201 have established the fact that such backward and unfavorable conditions are a menace to progres- sive civilization. The first institution to feel the depression that follows declining prosperity is the country school. After fifty years of such man- agement the school-houses are no better, the course of study is no richer, and the aims of education are no higher. Any form of progress requires people with resources, ambitions, hopes, and determination if hindrances are to be re- moved and obstacles overcome. Factors in Interest. — To be a proprietor and not a lessee is an important distinction in organ- ized society when matters of public welfare are to be decided. There is no better nor more ener- getic period of history than the period of the American pioneer. This is due to the fact that enterprise is at that stage at a high mark, pres- ent sacrifice is balanced by future promise, and every immigrant is given a hearty welcome and a prominent place. The pioneer is interested, he is enthusiastic, he is confident, and he is ener- getic. The children of the pioneers are noted for their success and for their enterprise in founding and strengthening institutions of culture and progress. When they give up farm life and seek occupations of a different scope they are suc- ceeded by a class of farm laborers rather than by 202 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL a class of farm managers and owners. In many- communities the original inhabitants have been succeeded by immigrants from countries where their experience and training have not prepared them for the kind of school management adopted by the States. In addition to these social changes, the land has become too expensive for men of moderate means to purchase, and they have no option but to become renters of the farms of retired capitalists. By this reorganiza- tion of society interest is weakened, enterprise is reduced, and progress is hampered. The men and women who come from the farm under this management do not have the initiative, nor the opportunities, nor the possibilities that were the characteristics of the previous generation. The State. — In this uplift of country-school work there are many varying situations, and uni- form treatment and legislation are impossible. The whole problem needs to be worked out sym- pathetically and consistently, through wise and energetic administration. The State should adopt effective and notable standards and then offer pecuniary inducements to secure compliance. This can be best done by State grants of money to such districts as fully develop conditions im- posed by the standards. By this procedure the authority of the local management would be rec- CONDITIONS AND PROSPECTS 203 ognized and popular interest in the work would be permanently improved. Initiative must be satisfied with a gradual expansion of such a move- ment. It should not be extended so rapidly as to become universal in a decade because perma- nence of appreciation and of strength depends upon a cordial, complete acceptance of these bet- ter things. The State is the only political unit that has the resources to reach this necessary solution and that can maintain the expenditures and the policy for a long enough period to estab- lish success. In doing this, high standards should be the only acceptable ones, as any other policy would cause the movement to be first neglected and later repudiated. Remedies Proposed. — To meet these exigen- cies many plans have been proposed. The nation and the States are seeking ways to conserve the natural resources, in order to keep the people pros- perous; they are distributing gratuitous informa- tion regarding agriculture, horticulture, dairying, poultry farming, and plant and animal products. It is recognized by the government that the fut- ure is decided by the prudence exercised in the present. It is hoped to add to prosperity, to in- telligence, and to morality by securing a better understanding and a better status. The notion universally prevails that by proper scientific man- 204 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL agement cheaper bread for the multitude can be produced, cheaper meat for the market can be obtained, and more of the resources of labor and thought can be granted for comfort and culture, for recreation and happiness. Education is im- possible unless there is enough income for family support without the assistance of child labor. There must be a relief from productive manual occupation in order to give the time to a child to go to school. Leisure, culture, and enlightenment are concomitants in civilization. Children can- not study if overtaxed by any kind of occupa- tion, and hence laws have been passed to prevent the years of childhood being taken for labor in- stead of education. The condition of the labor- ing classes must be improved and their individual- ities must be conserved if the education of their children is to be reached. The problem of the country school as a whole is, therefore, social rather than pedagogical. The Conclusion. — There are many difficult problems for modern civilization to solve. Im- portant considerations are related to the organ- ization and the management of the system of common schools. These problems are identified with complex conditions and their solutions are not readily secured. The teacher has a part, the school-board has a part, the patrons have a part, CONDITIONS AND PROSPECTS 205 the electors have a part, the officers chosen by the people have a part, and finally the general assem- bly has a part. The work that each of these can do depends upon the conditions that exist and the resources that are at command. Improving society is not a service that can be accomplished in a short time. It is an undertaking that will require years of labor, study, and legislation. XXIX FINAL WORDS Limitations. — In an attempt of this kind the treatment accorded is necessarily incomplete, be- cause the problems involved are too numerous and too complex to receive more than partial considera- tion. This undertaking cannot be more than a dis- cussion of the chief factors that must have a large part in the conduct of popular education, leaving to others additional investigations and conclusions that experience will indicate. All educational work is largely an approximation toward certain well- considered ideals. What may be the best for one generation should not suffice for succeeding gen- erations. What progress is most desirable at any one period depends upon the conditions that exist, the people's readiness for improvement, and the strength and quality of the leadership that can be provided. The preparation of leaders is the first step in the plan to be inaugurated, as without sen- sible, well-trained leadership any public enterprise will fail. Progress Required. — The country schools have been neglected by the last generation because of 206 FINAL WORDS 207 the marvellous interest that has been felt in other kinds of activity. Business enterprise has so rap- idly expanded, prosperity has so largely increased, the values of everything produced upon the farms have so decidedly advanced, the investment in land for farming has so notably enlarged in such a few years, that personal and public interest have been almost entirely absorbed in the struggle to keep control and obtain a fair share of the wealth that was being developed and distributed. These things have had the effect of allowing education to become secondary to business and industry, and the boys and girls of the generation have not received their share of the world's opportunities in intellectual training and culture. Other Fields Cultivated. — While the country school has been permitted to become the one lag- gard in the educational procession, the universities and the colleges, the high schools and the city schools, have enjoyed extraordinary development. Fine buildings have been erected, the most exten- sive equipment has been procured, greatly in- creased salaries have been paid teachers, the best talent, training, scholarship, and experience have been sought for the work, and finally the main question has become, what remains yet to be done that will better educate and train the children for the opportunities afforded by the age ? Vocational 208 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL education has been organized, professional educa- tion has been expanded, and requirements for entering these occupations have been much in- creased, while the spirit of better training and broader qualifications has been accepted and re- alized. So far is this true that the young peo- ple of the farms within reasonable reach of the cities and towns have abandoned the country schools and paid tuition to attend city schools, be- cause their own communities have not been alive to the situation. Those not so well situated and not possessing quite so much initiative have not had these special advantages and hence are not so well trained or so well prepared as the times and the demands require. What the People Need. — To remedy these con- ditions, the people and the teachers do not need formal instruction in educational principles and methods so much as they need vital instruction in the qualities and characteristics that are neces- sary to adapt a man to the present age. To this end community life needs to be enlarged, the com- munity spirit needs to be aroused, the commu- nity church, adapted to country conditions, needs to be organized, the community Sunday school needs to be maintained, and the community social and religious standards need to be readopted and revivified. It is admitted that this revival of the FINAL WORDS 209 good things in civilization is no small task, as to accomplish such results must mean that the leader- ship must be sincere, must be qualified, and must be consecrated. Humanity is the only great thing after all, and the advancement, improvement, and betterment of men is the one notable task of civ- ilization. Statutes and Progress. — All of the difficulties here suggested are not to be charged to the account of the people of the community. Too long have the would-be leaders of society depended upon the making of law to produce intelligence and morality. Too long has the formal been given instead of the vital. The common remedy for all evils, short- comings, and failures is to propose more laws with more limitations of public spirit and self-reliance. A large part of the mistakes of the present age con- sists in this disposition to rely upon legal enact- ments of legislatures to save the people. The country school has been created, limited, restricted, and hindered by statutes that are supposed to be important for educational organization and management. These have originated from the en- deavor to substitute administration and supervi- sion and direction for the shortcomings, the weak- nesses, and the incompetence of the teacher. Fixed conditions have been imposed, minor and unsatis- factory standards have been adopted, and weak 210 THE COUNTRY SCHOOL policies and insufficient results have been the con- sequence. Educational laws should be simple and general, so that the initiative and the discretion of school officers and teachers may have a chance to do the work necessary to be done. The present statutes are too specific, too directive, and too limiting to permit an effective school system, since personalities in action and in application make the school system and not the types of organization and management. The attempt to make the school system a perfected machine in its operations has violated the principle of freedom in school man- agement and the conceptions of rights taught by democracy. Discretion, freedom, initiative, and personal application must be restored in their ful- ness before the country school can be the institu- tion that the needs of education and training re- quire. Responsibility must be felt, recognition of success must be granted, and community ambition must be permitted. Progress in Education. — The adjustment of ed- ucational situations is one of spirit rather than one of fact. When the spirit of a community has been aroused, when the ambition has been touched, when the attitude toward the objects of life is free to act, then much that is valuable and permanent is sure to be done. There must be an encouraging note in the tone of society, there FINAL WORDS 211 must be an eternal hope in the things that can be accomplished, there must be a firm belief in the possibility of saving humanity, there must be a consistent faith in the worth of living and doing, if the efforts are to be permanent and the confidence of success is sufficient. It is the right spirit in edu- cation that will improve and solidify a right public opinion, that will establish and maintain an active public interest, that will secure and emphasize a substantiality of public decision, and that will confirm and demand the fulfilment of expectations by immediate and effective public action. With these conditions realized, with these purposes en- throned, and with these ideals accepted, the coun- try school can become a notable, an efficient, and a model institution for the maintenance of culture, conscience, and character in human society. INDEX Ability, 23. Academy, 152, 153. Adaptation in teaching, 12, 13, 50, 51. Agriculture, 16, 34, 37, 1 16, 117, 183, 197. As a study, 184, 185, 186, 187. Instruction in, 41, 138, 164. Algebra, 50. Altruism, 69. Animal life, 186, 187. Animals, study of, 186, 187. Application, 83. Apprehension, 83. Approximation, 206. Arithmetic, 29, 30, 49, 50, 54, 163, 168, 169, 170, 171. Asceticism, 124, 125. Assignment of lessons, 86, 87, 88, 92. Attitude, of community, 143. Of pupils, 66. Authority factor, 67, 68. Capability, 23, 32, 38, 46, 51. Of country boys and girls, 144. Of teacher, 130, 131, 155. Capitalists, 197. Carpentry, 37. Centre of interest, 60. Character, 22, 32, 64, 195, 196. City, the, attractions of, 108. Homes, 142. Improvements, 142. Lawns and parks, 142. People of, 140. Schools, 142. Civilization, 7, 25, 3 8, 1 3 2, 204, 209. Class leaders, 93, 94. Classification, 29, 30. Closing school, 72. Clubs, 112. Literary, 40. Science, 41. Singing, 42. Women's, 42. College entrance, 153. Common sense, 62, 72, ill. Commoner, 10 1. Community, local, 131, 134, 137, 142, 188, 209. Attitude of, 143. Co-operation in, 9. Country, 3, 5, 9, 33, 37, 39, 43, 198. Life, 208. Meetings, 40, 41, 42, 43. Organization of, 39. Spirit, 208. Unit, 149, 150. Companionship, 66. Comparison, 192. Competition, 44. Composition, English, 167. Conduct, 57, 63, 64. Conservation, 203. Contract, 102. Cooking, 37, 164. Co-operation, 9, II, 18, 39, 43, 103, 104, 105, 113, 139, 141, 142, 144, 145, 194. Co-ordination, 1 1. Country boys and girls, energy of, 144. 213 214 INDEX Country life, 16, 19, 108, 140, 141, 175,176, 188, 197,208. Dissatisfaction with, 19. Country pupils, 15. Country school, 10, 45, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 200, 202, 208, 209. Business side of, 127, 142, 173, 174. _ Inspection of, 129, 130. Isolation of, 143. Place in community, 11. Progress of, 134, 206, 207. State subsidy for, 129. Supervision of, 129. Country teacher, 131, 136, 148, 154, 155,164, 174, 175, 176. County superintendent, 114. County unit, 149. Course of study, 28, 37, 138, 159. Crops, 197, 198. Culture, 5, 35, 132, 158, 199, 204. Intellectual, 13, 14, 32. Culture studies, 14. Customs, 66, 93. Demonstration schools, 137, 179. Demonstration work, 33, 34, 37, 184. Discipline, 64, 75, 104. Methods for securing, 76. Dissipation, 109. District fair, 187. Drawing, 164. Drills, 79. Economy, 134, 146, 156, 175. Practical, 17. Education, 33, 102, 157, 158. Aims of, 201. American, 161. Chinese, 159. Egyptian, 160. Expenditures for, 174. Fundamentals of, 159. Greek, 160. Hebraic, 159. Hindoo, 159. Meaning of, 21, 22, 25. Province of, 125. Educators, 158. Efficiency, 132, 158. Electors, 5, 6, 7, 147, 200. English, 80, 165, 167, 171. Composition, 79, 163, 167, 168. Grammar, 79, 163, 166, 168. Language, 82, 163, 165, 168. Literature, 79, 163. Oral, 167. Pronunciation of, 165, 166. Rhetoric, 168. Spelling, 79, 163, 165. Entertainment, 19, 43, 44, 108, 109. Environment, 17, 25, 44, 143. Influence of, 141. Equality, doctrine of, 190, 192. Esteem, 66. Examinations, 131, 175. Aim of, 81. Difficulties of, 84, 85. Frequency of, 82, 83. Nature of, 80, 81. Place of, 78. Province of, 79. Purpose of, 83, 84. Exercise, American idea of, 123. Experience, 143, 177. Value of, 17, 178. Expert, the, demand for, 119, 180. Factor, authority, 6j. Force, 68. Intellectual, 67. Moral, 66. INDEX 215 Failure, 24, 64. In conduct, 63. Fairs, 187. Family life, 18. Farm employees, 198. Farmer, the, education of, 191. Independence of, 139. Isolation of, 139. Land-owning, 197. Mistakes of, 140, 141. Tenant, 198. Fatigue, 49. Floor plan, yy. Force factor, 68. Freedom, 96. Geography, 82, 88, 163, 171. Grades, 50, 153. Grading, 30. Grammar, English, 163, 166, 168. Habits, 14, 17, 22, 23, 32, 56, 196. Habits of industry, importance of, 14. Happiness, 5, 12, 13, 19, 37, 41, 66, 188, 189, 193. "Hard times," 198. Health, 22, 36, 41, 51. Helpfulness, moral, 18. Of money, 132. High school, 153, 176. History, 79, 82, 163, 171. Home, the, 18, 142, 175, 187, 189. Home economics, 34, 138, 164. Home training, II, Hygiene, 163, 189. Imagination, 46, 48. Immigrant, the, 201, 202. Improvements, 142. Incapability, 69. Incompetency, 69. Independence, 134, 135, 139. Lack of, 142. Individual characteristics, 65. Industry, habits of, 14, 17, 23. Inexperience, 76. Inferiority, 68. Information, 87. Ingenuity, 75, 76. Inspection, 129, 130, 143, 148. Instruction, method of, 93. Intellectual factor, 67. Interest, centre of, 60. Isolation, 125. Of country school, 143. Results of, 140. Weakness of, 139. Jesuits, methods of instruction of, 93- Judgment, 46, 48, 50, 72. Justice, 63. Knowledge, 12, 156. Of the right, 63. Labor, 124, 133, 204. Land, price of, 197. Speculation in, 199. Laymen, 140. Leaders, 105, 206. Leadership, no, 206. Lectures, 35, 43. Legislation, 143, 209. Leisure, 109, 204. Lessons, assignment of, 86, 92. Open-book, 89. Library, the, 112. Licenses, 137. Limitations, 206. Literary clubs, 40. Living, high price of, 198. Love, 66. Lyceums, 35, 79. 216 INDEX Machinery, 199. Manual training, 164. Object of, 183. Masses, the, 133, 137, 158, 163. Mathematics, 80, 168. Memory, 46, 48. Men teachers, 116. Methods, 91. Military precision, 73. Mind, development of, 46, 48, 49, 50. Moral factor, 66. Moral life, 32. Morality, 5, 196. Motives, 64. Music, 42. Vocal, 163. Nature study, 164. Novelty, 75, 76, 96. Obedience, 56, 63. Occupation, 15, 17, 35, 36, 38, no, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 181, 183, 191. Opportunities 191. Organization, in, 119. Educational, 118. In school, 27. Of country community, 39. Of supervision, 1 15. Organizations, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 112. Over-discipline, 73, 74. Parents, 154. Patience, 84, 85. Patrician class, 144. Patrons, 7. Peasant class, 144. People, the, 100, 101, 103, 104, 106, 118, 119, 120, 208, 209. Perception, 46, 47, 48. Perseverance, 85. Personality, dealing with, 65. Physical training, 164. Physiology, 163, 168, 171. Physique, 144. Pioneer, the, 134, 201. Plant life, 185. Plants, study of, 185, 186. Play, 121. Playground, the, 73, no, 121, 122. Political influence, 100, IOI. Popularity, 25, 66. Practical, the, importance of, 85, 158. Province of, II, 12. Practical callings, 37. Programme, the, 45, 46, 52, 53, 54, 92- Progress, of country school, 134, 206, 207. Educational, 143, 200, 209. Promotion, 84, 154, 155. Pronunciation, 165, 166. Prospects, 197. Prosperity, 5, 9, 13, 25, 37. Provincialism, 144. Public sentiment, 118. Punishment, 69. Pupils, the, 7, 8, 9, n, 14, 15, 32, 62, 63, 64. Knowing names of, 77. Seating, 30, 31. Reading, 29, 163. Recess, 51, 69. Recitation, the, 45, 92, 93, 97. Form of, 95. Periods of, 92. Plan of, 98. Programme of, 53. Value of, 93. Records, 27. INDEX 217 Recreation, 19, 110, III, 112, 121, 122, I23. 124, Reproof, 69. Respect, 66. Revenue, 136. Reviewing, 28, 81, 83, 84. Rhetoric, 168. Roman education, 160. Rules, 62. Salary, 18, 100, 102, 142, 173, 207. Sanitation, 36, 41. Scholar, the, 119. Scholarship, 67, 130, 174, 195. School, the, 101, 125, 126, 128. Function of, 102. Opening of, 72. Order in, 74, 75. Organization of, 27. School board, the, 5, 6, 8, 27, 40, 102, 151. School day, length of, 51, 52. School directors, 5. School districts, 103. OfBcers of, 146, 147. School government, 62. Factors in, 66. School-grounds, 33. School-house, the, 33, 34, 35, 36. School management, aims of, 55. Characteristics of, 58, 59. School-room, 74. Floor plan of, 77. School work, value of, 158. Schools, demonstration, 133, 137, 179, 184. Science, 36. Science club, 41. Self-control, 66, 74. Self-reliance, 21. Sewing, 37, 164. Shop, the, 36. Signals, 72. Singing clubs, the, 42. Skill, 59, 182, 183, 191, 192. Social centre, the, 121. Social life, 4, 35, 101, 105, 122. Social side, the, 24. Social uplift, 103. Spelling, 79, 80, 163. Spontaneity, 96. Standardization, 136, 152, 153, 154, 156, 157, 199. State, the, province of in educa- tion, 135, 136, 202, 203. State aid, 127, 128, 129, 130, 202, 203. State institute, 130. Stimulation, 32. Studies, 21, 79, 80, 82. Programme of, 162. Study, 51, 81, 86, 89. Course of, 12, 28, 37, 138, 159. Programme of, 54. Values of, 91. Subsidy, State, 128, 129, 137, 180, 202. Success, 23, 24, 63, 64, 81, 137, 143, 188, 193, 194, 195. Supervision, 73, 114, 134, 137, 143, 180, 200, 209. Ends of, 117, 118. Organization of, 115. Unit of, 115, 148. Suspension, 69. Sympathy, 85, 86. System, 73, 78, 79. Tactics, 55, 71, 72, 74, 75. Talent, variability of, 190. Taxation, 128. Taxing unit, the, 147, 148. Teacher, the, 8, 9, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28,29,31, 32, 36,55,56,57, 58,59,61,62,63,64,65,66, 218 INDEX 67, 68, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 84, 86, 87, 88, 90, 94, 95, 96, 97, 100, 101, 102, 107, 116, 117, 124, 125, 130. Incompetency of, 69. Inefficiency of, 68. Influence of, 104, 105, 106. Licensing of, 131. Manner of, 57. Training of, 131, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180. Special, 131, 185. Spirit of, 57, 66. Teacher supply, 173. Teachers' institute, 180. Teachers' reading circle, 180. Teaching, economy in, 94, 95. Text-books, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 157. Town, life in, 141, 142. Township unit, 149. Traditions, 96, 156. Training, of teacher, 131, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180. Social, 19. Vocational, 16. Transportation, progress in, 134, 150. Tutoring, 93. Useful, the, 85. Vigilance, necessity for, 64. Vocational notions, 182, 183, 184. Weeds, study of, 186. Women teachers, 116, 117. Women's club, 42. Work, 11, 121, 188. Oral, 80, 82, 98. Quality of, 173. Written, 98. Young people, 108, 109, no. in, 112, 208. Rights of, 20, 31, 63, 69. Ian 27 1913 ^"