.of /f/i^ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 019 371 015 3 HoUinger Corp. iciH. j> BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN Serial No. 474; General Series No. 310 EXTENSION DIVISION OF The University of Wisconsin General Information and Welfare THE RURAL AWAKENING I]Sr ITS RELATION TO Civic and Social Center Development Address delivered before The First National Confer- ence on Civic and Social Center Development, at Madi- son, Wis., October 37, 1911, by Herbert Quick, Editor of Farm and Fireside. ''' PRICE, 5 CENTS MADISON Published by the University January, 1912 Entered as second class matter, June 10, 1898, at the post-office at Madison, Wisconsin, under the Act of July 16, 1894. UNIVERSITY EXTENSION DIVISION ^)EPARTIVIENT OF CORRESPONDENCE-STUDY One or more courses are otTered in each of the following lines for homo-study Affnculture Business a)id Industri/ Engineering Electrical, Mechanical, Civil Mec/t a nica I Draicin g Surveying HigMoay Con str u ctio?i The Languages French, Italian, Spanish, German, Greek, Latin History Ancient, Medieval, Modern, American, European Home Economics Political Economy Political Science Sociology P/iilosophy Education Mathematics English Language and Literature Physical Sciences Bacteriology, Botany, Physical Geography, Geology, Chemistry, Astronomy LaiD Pharmacy Music Teachers^ Revieics Any one or all of the above departmental announcements will 'be mailed to any address on request. DEPARTMENT OF INSTRUCTION BY LECTURES A bulletin descriptive of lectures and lecture courses will be mailed to any address on request. DEPARTMENT OF GENERAL INFORMATION AND WELFARE Bulletins descriptive of this department, including Munic- ipal Reference, Civic and Social Center, and Vocational Tnsliluto work, will bo mailed on request. DEPARTMENT OF DEBATING AND PUBLIC DISCUSSION Bulletins on debating and the discussion of public ques- tions will be mailed on request without charge to citi- zens of the state. Copies will be mailed to addresses outside the state upon receipt of list price. [2] ^\)t Wini\}tv^itp of Wi&ton^in UNIVERSITY EXTENSION DIVISION Department of General Information and Welfare Madison, Wis. OFFICERS OF ADMINISTKATIOIS Charles Richard Van Hise, Ph. D., LL. D. President of the University Louis E. Reber, M. S., Sc. D. Dean, University Extension Division Edward J. Ward, M. A. Adviser, Bureau of Civic and Social Center Developments THE RURAL AWAKENING A'ddress delivered bg Herbert Quick, Editor of Farm and Fire- before the First National Conference on Civic and Social Center Development, at Madison, \Vis., October ;27, 1911. The manner in which the ordinar^^ farmer, or the ordi- nary farmer's wife will be impressed by the fact that there has been gathered together here in Madison, Wisconsin, a movement for the making" of schoolhouses social centers,, where there may be free and untrammeied debate of pub- lic qtiestions — which I take it is the prime aim of the So- cial Center movement — and recreational and cultural gath- erings and meetings on social lines, must be of interest to those present. Traditional Use of tlie Country Sciiooiiiouse In my experience in the West, where they have faced the problem of the public demand for the use of the schoolhouse, such use has not been shut off bj^ any reluc- tance on the part of the officials to give the schoolhouse [3] for the use of tlie people. The trouble has l)OL'n, in the main, that tliere has been a lessenino- and lesseiiino-, o-rad- ually, ot" the demand for the sclioolliouse on the part of tlie peoi^le. Tliat is the trouble. Wlienever we have any question to be debated out in tlie counti'v, there is no dif- iiculty in getting the use of tlie schoolhouse. Such school - house occupancy is an established fact, and a recognized right in agricultural politics in most of the rural districts. The use of the schoolhouse is flagging for the want of an audience, not by reason of any exclusion. In my boyhood, in the middle West, the schoolhouse was the social center, in so far as we had any. When any denomination, (^atholic or Protestant, chose to hold serv- ices, the schoolhouse was given for them. The old-fash- ioned "Literary" — we left everything off but the adjective — one in every township where old and young got together for the purpose of reading papers and for debates; the .-spelling bee — all these were held in the schoolhouse. But :1;hey seem to have gone. The country literary societj^ imeets in the same manner as a club in the city, in an ab- isolutely private way and usually' in a private house. Reasons for Decline of Use of Rural Schoolhouse as Social Center "What is the cause of the abandonment of the country ischoolhouse as a social center? There are a number of reasons. First, the railroad has run over it. It has brought the little country village into almost every neigh- borhood or in reach of it. Here has been built the little •opera house, the lodge room, the public hall, where people may go for such functions as are held there. The building of churches in the country, as it has been extended, has brought to bear upon the schoolhouse as a social center an influence which has robbed the school- house of the best people, and <>f meetings of a religious [4] nature. The church has been in a large measure the cause of the decadence of the schoolhouse as a social center. The invention and adoption of modern schoolhouse equipment is a physical reason for the abandonment of the schoolhouse; that bench that ran around the sides of the room, which as we teach, and have been taught, was unhygienic and of a cruel character, and those old-fash- ioned desks built of boards, were required by the fact that in those days young people went to school longer than they do now. It was no uncommon thing to find there pupils of twent}^ and twenty-one years. Now youL scarcely ever see them there and the schoolhouse has been re -equipped with benches that will not permit of older people using them. The country schoolhouse of today i& physically unfit for the use of grown people for evening*^ gatherings. I have held meetings in country schoolhouses to which I think most of the audience would have refused to come^ and justly so, if they had known how they were to be tor- tured, not alone by the speaker, but by the physical condi- tions under which they listened to him. Influence of the City upon Rural Communities These reasons for the abandonment of the schoolhouse as a social center are no more influential than is the effect of the city upon the country. This has been almost fatal to any widespread interest in neighborhood work in many communities. The people who might be leaders in coun- try life are in a state of expectancy. They do not reckon upon being in the countr^^ all their lives. They expect tO' become able to go to town to live. Rural life has in many ways suffered from the tremen- dous suck of the city upon country population. The fact is coming to be recognized th^^t while poor people have- . [51 "been driven too-etlier by myriads in the citj-, forminji- the city slum, we have at the other end of tlie social machine what has been spoken of as the country slum, where con- ditions are as bad as, if not worse tliaii, in the city. One phase of tlie magnet's action is the crow farm life of the United States is to a very larjyfe extent the life of a race of hermits. She told me that the first thing she did to these schools was to clean them ph.vsieally, remove the ontward disfigurements, and get acquainted with the children. The teachers were in- efficient. Thej^ had been conducting these country schools- as the average teacher in the United States has been con- ducting them for generations — ^a bad copy of a poor and ineffective city school. Tliey had little relation to coun- try life. Tlie readers in which thev read had been com- piled by p?ople in whom there was no such a thing as- rural si)irit. The histories, from which they studied the movements of our nation, were written by men who knew little or nothing about the history of the agricultural life of the country. Their arithmetics had been compiled by- people who made up problems in banking and discount, and knew nothing about the per cent of plant food needed in the soil to make the corn grow, or how much butter fat should be in the cow's milk, or of the problems of e^g production. Their physical geographies, which dealt to- some extent with the earth and its composition, contained very little in the way of discussion of the soil. They simply presented the things of interest to the people of the- towns and cities. They had very little of nature study, and what they had was about such animals as the marmot and the auk, or Huxley's three-toed horse — there was nothing closer to the farm life than the muskrat, in fact the entire course of study had been made up by people from the city and for the children of the cities. These rural pupils were taught by people from the city high schools, to a great extent, people who knew nothing- whatever of the life for which they were in-e paring the children under their care. The result was, as it always has been, that the country boys were given ambitions to [8] loe lawyers — and ultimately to land in the presidency of the United States, — or to be standard oil mag-nates; and the girls wanted to be wives of captains of industry. With these ambitions imparted in the rural schools, and under these conditions generally, one has no reasons to be sur- prised at the fact that country life for the past fifty years has been one long period of decay. It will be cured over the whole nation just as in this region of Iowa it is being ■cured through the schools. This woman told nle that after five years, she still has left a large percentage of the original corps of teachers — two-thirds. They are now efficient. They have found out what was needed and are supplying it. They are so in love with the work that many of them refuse to con- sider offer of larger salaries in city schools. The Re-constructed Country School The new schoolhouses built there are equal to the scliool- houses of the towns, with teachers quite as efficient, who are making a successful effort to correlate the work of the public schools with countr3^ life. I saw boys sitting in their seats in countrj^ schoolhouses with racks of agri tural college bulletins by their sides. They were actually writing on such things as raspberry culture and potatoes, and were checking up their work in school by the work on the farm. They were taking from the school to the farm value received from the agricultural bulletins. I spoke at their farmers' institute. I talked one night to 1500 people, the vast majority of them farmers who had come into this little town for the purpose of attending this farmers' institute. It was held in a rather small armory. The lower part of the armory had been arranged for drill purposes, and now given over to the use of an •exhibit of the rural school work of that county. There were aprons hemmed by the pupils in the rural schools, [9] bultiT. pill's of cookies, bread and cake, and tliere were farm tools, and models of the ideal country school, raffia work; everything: that could possibly be done bj'^ the little boys and girls of the country schools and almost every- thing- related to farm life. In the inception of the move- ment the country children thought tliey could not compete with the town schools, and the town schools sort of looked down on the children of the country schools. But now. the rural schools feel a rather uppish superiority ov^er the town schools. Tiiej^ feel that their knowledge is of more value, more practical." This is the result of only five years of individual work upon the country schools of one county. A Rational Rural Program One boy became interested in this work of corn grow- ing and stock judging. He took prizes. His mother and sisters were there at the institute as well dressed as Siuy women on the grounds. The family had been redeemed from poverty and worthlessness by this new kind of rural school. The boy who was writing on agriculture — the raspberry essayist — had been one of the hard eases three or four years before. He had been headed straight for the gutter. Now he had become a good boy — all through seeing the fine things in rural life pointed out to him by a sane rural curriculum. Here is the rural awakening that the social center con- ference must get in line to help. The whole problem of country life needs j'-our help; Ave need social center work in the country where the best brains of the land are; we need schoolhouses made for the discussion of all public and political questions. We must have a new kind of coun- try schoolhouse. We have just reached the point where we are readj^ to abandon the old schoolhouse of one room and build something better. It must be built so as to [lOJ aninister to the things needed and demanded by an awak- -ened rural life. The Rural School as Neighborhood Laboratory The slogan of the farmer must be "cooperation." The farmers must sell cooperatively, they must buy coopera- tively. The new schoolhouse should be a place made to hold gatherings for the discussion of these matters, places where people may put their feet under the same table and talk to each other. The country schoolhouse should be a place where things can be done collectively that cannot be •done individually. All the work in the country school should be for the education of the neighborhood. The school should be a laboratory for the farms of the neigh- borhood. The individual testing of the milk of cows for butter fat should be carried on in the country school- houses, and is so carried on in some of the iDlaces I have named. In one place at which they began testing in the country school the milk from the neighborhood cows, a certain farmer who was against all these new-fangled things at first, (and you know we always find that kind of people) soon found by the school tests that he had been keeping cows which he thought were good, that were not actually paying their board and that on other cows he had made his money. He became a friend of the new-fangled no- tions. The Rural School as Neighborhood Economic Center The country school must ultimately become the count- ing room in which the neighborhood farm accounts are kept. The books of the farm must be kept cooperatively or they cannot be kept at all — the right kind of books. And when the agricultural colleges have worked out a system of accounts which will be more or less practical [11] LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 019 371 015 3 ami accurate as a cost system for farms, the best pupils of the country school of the future Avill Avork out in school tlie economic problems of that nei