New Ideals in Rural Schools | Page 2

which the State permits or which a
skilled teacher urges. Scattered schools will be consolidated, and
isolated ungraded schools will be improved. Given an interested
community, the modern teacher can vitalize every feature of the school,
changing the formal curriculum into an interesting and liberalizing
interpretation of country life and the pedantic drills and tasks of
instruction into a skillful ministry to real and abiding human wants.

PREFACE
No rural population has yet been able permanently to maintain itself
against the lure of the town or the city. Each civilization at one stage of
its development comprises a large proportion of rural people. But the
urban movement soon begins, and continues until all are living in
villages, towns, and cities. Such has been the movement of population

in all the older countries of high industrial development, as England,
France, and Germany. A similar movement is at present going on
rapidly in the United States.
No great social movement ever comes by chance; it is always to be
explained by deep-seated and adequate causes. The causes lying back
of the rapid growth of our cities at the expense of our rural districts are
very far from simple. They involve a great complex of social,
educational, and economic forces. As the spirit of adventure and
pioneering finds less to stimulate it, the gregarious impulse, the
tendency to flock together for our work and our play, gains in
ascendancy. Growing out of the greater intellectual opportunities and
demands of modern times, the standard of education has greatly
advanced. And under the incentive of present-day economic success
and luxury, comfortable circumstances and a moderate competence no
longer satisfy our people. Hence they turn to the city, looking to find
there the coveted social, educational, or economic opportunities.
It is doubtful, therefore, whether, even with improved conditions of
country life, the urbanization of our rural people can be wholly checked.
But it can be greatly retarded if the right agencies are set at work. The
rural school should be made and can be made one of the most
important of these agencies, although at the present time its influence is
chiefly negative. With the hope of offering some help, however slight,
in adjusting the rural school to its problem, this little volume is written
by one who himself belongs to the rural community by birth and early
education and occupation.
G. H. B. CORNELL COLLEGE, February, 1913.

NEW IDEALS IN RURAL SCHOOLS

I
THE RURAL SCHOOL AND ITS PROBLEM

The general problem of the rural school
The general problem of the rural school is the same as that of any other
type of school--to render to the community the largest possible returns
upon its investment in education with the least possible waste. Schools
are great education factories set up at public expense. The raw material
consists of the children of succeeding generations, helpless and
inefficient because of ignorance and immaturity. The school is to turn
out as its product men and women ready and able to take up their part
in the great world of activities going on about them. It is in this way, in
efficient education, that society gets its return for its investment in the
schools.
The word "education" has in recent years been taking on a new and
more vital meaning. In earlier times the value of education was
assumed, or vaguely taken on faith. Education was supposed to consist
of so much "learning," or a given amount of "discipline," or a certain
quantity of "culture." Under the newer definition, education may
include all these things, but it must do more; it must relate itself
immediately and concretely to the business of living. We no longer
inquire of one how much he knows, or the degree to which his powers
have been "cultivated"; but rather to what extent his education has led
to a more fruitful life in the home, the state, the church, and other social
institutions; how largely it has helped him to more effective work in a
worthy occupation; and whether it has resulted in greater enjoyment
and appreciation of the finer values of personal experience,--in short,
whether for him education spells efficiency.
We are thus coming to see that education must enable the individual to
meet the real problems of actual experience as they are confronted in
the day's life. Nor can the help rendered be indefinite, intangible, or in
any degree uncertain. It must definitely adjust one to his place, and
cause him to grow in it, accomplishing the most for himself and for
society; it must add to the largeness of his personal life, and at the same
time increase his working efficiency.
This is to say that one's education must (1) furnish him with the
particular knowledge required for the life that he