New Ideals in Rural Schools | Page 8

equipment.
While the length of the school year is increasing in the rural districts,
the term is yet much shorter than in town and city schools. Many
communities have not more than six months of school, and few more
than eight. This shortage is rendered all the more serious by the
irregular attendance of the rural school children. A considerable
amount of absence on the part of the younger ones is unavoidable under
present conditions when the distance is great and the weather bad. After
all allowance is made for this fact, however, there is still an immense
amount of unnecessary waste of time through non-attendance. Many
rural schools show an average attendance for the year of not more than
sixty per cent of the enrollment. Going to school is not yet considered a
serious business by many of the rural patrons, and truant officers are
not so easily available in the country as in the city.
In financial support the rural school has of necessity been behind the
city school. Wealth is not piled up on a small area in agricultural
communities as is the case in the city. It would often require square
miles of land to equal in value certain city blocks. But making full
allowance for this difference, the farmers have not supported their
schools as well as is done by the patrons of town and city schools. The
school taxes for rural districts are much lower than in city districts, in
most instances not more than half as high. It is this conservatism in
expenditure that is responsible for many of the defects in the rural

school, and particularly for the relatively inefficient teaching that is
done. The rural teachers are the least educated, the least experienced,
and the most poorly paid of any class of our teachers. They consist
almost wholly of girls, a large proportion of whom are under twenty
years of age, and who continue teaching not more than a year or two.
Not only is this the case, but effective supervision of the teaching is
wholly impossible because of the large area assigned to the county or
district superintendent of rural schools. In no great industrial project
should we think of placing our youngest and most inexperienced
workers in the hardest and most important positions, and this without
supervision of their work.
The rural school has not, therefore, yet been adjusted to its problem. It
has a splendid field of work, but is not developing it. Our farming
population have capacity for education and need it, but they are not
securing it. There is plenty of money available for the support of the
rural school, but the school is not getting it. Enough well-equipped
teachers can be had for the rural schools, but the standards have not yet
required adequate preparation, nor the pay been sufficient to warrant
extensive expenditure for it.
In the rural school is found the most important and puzzling
educational problem of the present day. If our agricultural population
are not to fall behind other favored classes of industrial workers in
intelligence and preparation for the activities that are to engage them,
the rural school must begin working out a better adjustment to its
problem. Its curriculum must be broader and richer, and more closely
related to the life and interests of the farm. The organization of the
school, both on the intellectual and the social side, must bring it more
closely into touch with the interests and needs of the rural community.
The support and administration of rural education must be improved.
Teachers for the rural schools must be better educated and better paid,
and their teaching must be correspondingly more efficient. The
following pages will be given to a discussion of these problems of
adjustment.

II
THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF THE RURAL SCHOOL
Every school possesses two types of organization: (1) an intellectual
organization involving the selection and arrangement of a curriculum,
and its presentation through instruction; and (2) a social organization
involving, on the one hand, the inter-relations of the school and the
community, and on the other the relations of the pupils with each other
and the teacher.
The rural school and the community
The rural school and community are not at present in vital touch with
each other. The community is not getting enough from the school
toward making life larger, happier, and more efficient; it is not giving
enough to the school either in helpful coöperation or financial support.
In general, it must be said that most of our rural people, the patrons of
the rural school, have not yet conceived education broadly. They think
of the school as having fulfilled its function when it has supplied the
simplest rudiments of reading, writing, and number. And, naturally
enough, the rural school has conceived