NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD Evelyn Dewey THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD PORTER RURAL SCHOOL, OCTOBER 14, 1912, AND SOME OF THE LABOR THAT AIDED IN ITS RECONSTRUCTION NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD The Regeneration of the Porter School BY EVELYN DEWEY NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 68 1 FIFTH AVENUE COPYRIGHT 1919 BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America Educi; .a Lioraz-y To the Parents and Children of PORTER whose enthusiasm and neigh- borly spirit have built up a Community ^ 25275G PREFACE THERE are many reasons why an account of Mrs. Harvey's work should be given to the pub- lic. What she has accomplished in Porter Community has a vital message for everyone who is interested in democracy. She has built up a community able to deal with its own prob- lems and to work together for a constructive realization of the ideals of our country. She has done this by a method that cannot fail to be helpful to every teacher and social worker. It is a method which takes what is at hand as foundation and builds ideals and character qualities that make for success in any environ- ment. The specific reaction upon agricultural problems is the most spectacular result of the work. The school set in a farming region has already produced from a typical stagnated dis- trict a group of people enthusiastic over farm- ing as a profession and equipped to turn their enthusiasm into prosperous, permanent farm homes. Perhaps the most significant single thing about the work is that it has been accom- plished with no greater resources than are vii PREFACE available in any isolated district. Mrs. Harvey is so convinced of the possibilities for new schools and a new farm life that lie in every district that she has remained in Porter in spite of great sacrifice and hardships. Mrs. Harvey and Miss Crecelius are pioneers in the real sense of the word. They have blazed a trail which is easy and satisfying to follow, but which has cost the best that they had to give. Without the cooperation of the Bureau of Educational Experiments of New York City, Mrs. Harvey would not have been able to do all that she has to help other teachers and other communities. It is to be hoped that some method may still be found by which the Porter school of to-day may become a permanent in- stitution and so help every backward district find itself. NEW YORK CITY, APRIL, 1919. Vltl CONTENTS CHAPTER PACE I THE COUNTRY LIFE MOVEMENT I II THE LITTLE RED SCHOOL HOUSE TODAY . . 26 III How PORTER FOUND A SOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL PROBLEM 52 IV THE STORY OF THE NEW PORTER SCHOOL . . 73 V THE GROWTH OF THE COMMUNITY .... 102 VI THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE SCHOOL 134 VII ETHICS AND THE SOCIAL SCHOOL 168 VIII THE SCHOOL AND THE ECONOMIC INTERESTS OF PORTER 190 IX THE SCHOOL PROGRAM AND ORGANIZATION . . 223 X AGRICULTURE AND THE CURRICULUM .... 252 XI THE PLACE OF READING AND WRITING IN THE CURRICULUM 293 XII EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY 322 ILLUSTRATIONS PORTER RURAL SCHOOL, OCTOBER 14, 1912 Frontispiece FACING PAGE MRS. MARIE TURNER HARVEY 10 A GLIMPSE OF THE OLD SCHOOLROOM .... 34 A DETAIL OF THE SCHOOL INTERIOR IN THE OLD DAYS . 42 MAP OF THE DISTRICT 50 THE NEW BASEMENT 66 THE FIRST TEACHER'S COTTAGE IN MISSOURI . . 74 RE-ROOFING THE SCHOOL HOUSE IN 1917 . . .82 THE "Bus" THAT VISITS OUTLYING HOMES . . 90 GIRLS' TOILET BEFORE AND AFTER RECONSTRUCTION . 98 PORTER COMMUNITY BAND 130 THE RED CROSS IN PORTER SCHOOL .... 146 FIRST GRADUATING CLASS 162 SOCIAL GAMES IN THE SCHOOLROOM .... 186 A MOVABLE SCHOOL OF AGRICULTURE .... 202 A MOVABLE SCHOOL OF HOME ECONOMICS . . . 210 A MOVABLE SCHOOL OF HOME ECONOMICS IN THE BASE- MENT 218 CO-OPERATIVE MOVING OF THE TENANT HOUSE . . 242 A PRACTICAL BOTANY LESSON AT THE TEACHER'S COTTAGE 250 AT WORK IN THE SCHOOL GARDEN .... 266 A PROMISING YOUNG MEMBER OF THE POULTRY CLUB . 274 THE SCHOOL GARDEN Two YEARS AFTER ORGANIZATION 282 DISTRIBUTING VEGETABLE AND FLOWERING PLANTS . 290 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD CHAPTER I THE COUNTBY LIFE MOVEMENT WITH the growing realization that agricul- tural communities in this country are in grave danger of being left far behind in the march for social and economic progress, a number of movements have sprung up to spur on the farmer. City dwellers, realizing that a country can be only as strong as its agriculture, have sought to help with the cry of "Back to the Land", hereby hoping to serve the double pur- pose of increasing th^ body of farmers and decreasing the excess population of the cities. Any agitation which f ocusses attention on rural problems must contribute something; but the migration of untrained towns-people to the country and a new life with unfamiliar condi- tions cannot help constructively to change coun- try life. More important, however, are the movements that originate in the country, be- i 2 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD cause they attack directly the difficulties that face the fanning population. Concrete at- tempts at reform have been aimed at two factors in country life : first, agricultural meth- ods and second, education. They have been for the most part separate; agricultural colleges, foundations, and associations are preaching and teaching improved farm practices to adult farmers ; normal schools and educators, shocked by the deplorable condition of the country schools, are trying to improve them. The two problems are but the two halves of the same, and hence the first problem cannot be success- fully solved without the second. The funda- mental relationship of the two can be shown in a discussion of another movement. This is the Country Life movement ; a move- ment not to solve any one phase of the rural problem, but so to improve conditions of living in the country as to raise standards of efficiency to the point where problems can be settled by a body of intelligent, prosperous and progressive farmers. Lack of knowledge of scientific meth- ods of agriculture, and consequent poverty, are but one phase of country conditions that make for stagnation. Social conditions are the chief cause of the farmer's discontent, and as they improve, farm practices, health, and the rural school will cease to be special problems. The familiar symptoms of agricultural stagnation are the steady movement of the rising genera- tion from the country to the city and the great increase of tenant farmers. It is estimated that forty per cent of the farms in this country are now worked by renters. The causes back of these symptoms are what concern the workers in the Country Life Movement. Since the prob- lem is a social one, until it is attacked from the social point of view, all attempts to meet any one isolated difficulty must be uneconomical and only superficially successful. With the exception of a few small regions of the country, life on a farm is not attractive. The isolation and drudgery of the average fam- ily 's life overshadow the advantages of inde- pendence, and hence those who can move away from the farm do so, and vast numbers of those who cannot move become mere machines for the shiftless performance of endless routine work. Compared with life in a city, life on a farm must always mean hard work and isolation. However, an intelligent and determined attempt to reduce these evils to a minimum and to develop the largely unexplored possibilities of farm life would result in a speedy solution of the prob- lem. It is usually impossible for the farmer to 4 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD get away from home for more than a few hours at a time, because the live stock must be fed and cared for. Thus from the start he is habit- uated to a stay-at-home life. And as long as the country remains as thinly settled as at present, comparative isolation is bound to be the general rule, but complete separation from the outside world and from neighbors, now so common, is not a necessity. In general, success on a farm is measured by the amount of work that is put in. Therefore, the daily program is arranged to stretch the working day to its limits. When the day is over the household is too tired for anything but bed. Evening visiting is very rare, and day- time visiting, except for business, is impossible. Beading, every form of social relaxation, is al- most unknown in thousands of farm homes, be- cause of this endless pressure for work, and the resulting fatigue. The story of the farm woman who lived ten years in a community and then met, for the first time at the state fair, a neigh- bor, who lived only two miles away, does not picture any unusual circumstances. There are many homes where a lamp is lighted only in the short days of winter; during most of the year darkness is the signal for bed. There is nothing to read in these houses, except, perhaps, THE COUNTRY LIFE MOVEMENT 5 a farm or church weekly newspaper and a hand- ful of left over school books. In good weather the family will occasionally go to church, and the man of the household goes to the nearest town once a week or so for supplies and to sell produce ; his wife usually thinks she is too busy to go with him. Once or twice a week a passing neighbor may stop for a few minutes ' chat ; once or twice a year there is a funeral or a wedding, and this is all the relief from work year in and year out. There is leisure in the winter, but the roads are so bad, keeping warm in an open carriage so difficult, and habits of staying at home so fixed that this leisure is not used for greater sociability. The children of a community meet at school, play and work together, and form the natural, wholesome habits that come from belonging to a social group. In the life of their parents they see just the opposite of this, a life confined ex- clusively to the household. It is no wonder then that the children look to the town for the only opportunity to continue and broaden the life they have known at school. The noise and movement, the opportunities for recreation at every turn, above all the chance to feel them- selves part of a group exercise a fascination for which the average community does not even 6 NEW SCHOOLS FOB OLD attempt to find a substitute. In their own homes there is no example from which they can learn to cultivate their social possibilities; the school ignores the problem. Conscious of the lack in their lives, but unequipped to supply it themselves, they are only too ready to seize the slightest chance to exchange the farm for the town. This state of affairs is harder on the girls than the boys. The latter are freer to choose, and come to look to the town for all their recreation, even if they do noi leave home. But parents, in order to protect their daughters from the dangers of the town, allow them to go very rarely. The result is that farm girls are cut off from all lands of social outlet just at the age when they need it most. On leaving school the daily companionship with their schoolmates ceases, and their brothers and boy friends are fast drifting into the habit of spend- ing their one leisure evening, Saturday, in town. It is equally true that the farmer 's wife is more isolated than her husband; partly be- cause of that division of labor, which gives the man the control of buying and selling; but chiefly because, due to habit and convention, go- ing to town, business calls, errands and ex- change of labor are left to the men. The women are also cut off from the political life of the men. THE COUNTRY LIFE MOVEMENT 7 In school meetings, local elections, road mend- ings, etc., the men not only find social outlet, but they get training, in thinking and acting as a group, a chance to express their instinct for leadership and organization. In regions where the granges are strong, men and women both get more opportunity for social activity, and there is usually a church in every neighborhood, but both these outlets are voluntary and do not absorb the whole community. This isolation is probably the chief cause of the farmers' traditional conservatism and lack of initiative. Where there is almost no inter- change of ideas, even through books, it is not strange that opinions and beliefs do not change rapidly. Cities are the homes of progress and reform, not because the city dweller is naturally more intelligent and energetic than the farmer, but because the latter is not forced into daily contact with numbers of people. The farmer is not subjected to the pressure of having to earn a living in an occupation that is obviously only one small part of a great whole. Eacli farm is more or less an independent unit in it- self, and is largely self-supporting ; the farmer can go along as he always has and as his father did before him and still keep going. He is slip- ping behind, of course, but the process is so 8 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD gradual and the cause so hard to see that it does not spur him to new and different efforts. If he does not keep at least at the heels of progress the man in the city is overtaken by swift ruin because of a competition which he can see and feel. This lack of competition is felt as much in the world of ideas as in that of business. The farmer may form his ideas and beliefs to fit a world that existed when his father was young, and he may grow old without ever having had any pressing occasion to change them. He associates little with people outside the family, and then with a small group who are nearly as familiar as his relatives ; he reads lit- tle, and conditions about him change so slowly as to be almost imperceptible. His outworn ideas seem still to belong to the world he lives in, or if they clash he has only to withdraw a little from his neighbors and he is intrenched in a castle where the slow and rare forces that operate for change go past unnoted. Although the farmer is isolated socially and economically he is really no more independent of the social and economic forces that influence and bring changes than the city worker. His relations with other industries and institutions are less obvious, but not less fundamental. Farmers feed the nation ; if they fail, we must THE COUNTRY LIFE MOVEMENT 9 either make a costly readjustment so that we can get the food from other countries, or we must fail with the farmers. The nation makes demands on the farmer to supply this food under changing conditions. To meet the de- mand with any success he must be ready for and understand these changes. The kind of demand must influence the way he works, just as his success or failure influences the rest of the country. Agriculture is the fundamental industry of a nation on which all other indus- tries rest. The food supply must be assured before people can turn their energies to other types of production. The war has demonstrated this interdependence of farm and city life, and, in focussing attention on the extent to which a nation is affected by agricultural conditions, has pointed out to the farmer the responsibility for meeting world situations that rests upon him. The splendid way in which he has re- sponded to the increased demands shows that he is able to adjust quickly to changed con- ditions, to put forth new energy and show initia- tive. In the present emergency farmers as a class have proved that their usual conserva- tism and failure to keep up with modern changes are not fundamental traits that must be accepted as necessary evils of agricultural 10 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD life, but are rather the result of the economic conditions and social surroundings in which the farmer lives. Farmers are unorganized; they produce not as part of an industry, or even as members of a group, but as individuals. The demand for their surplus product is not a demand for standardized articles, made for conditions that are familiar to the farmer, but a general de- mand for food that comes from every part of the population and every part of the country. Usually the markets they supply are distant and unfamiliar. The lives and business meth- ods of the people who buy their surplus are strange to them. There is probably no other form of production that could continue selling to distant, unfamiliar markets for any length of time, without organization or knowledge of the conditions which it must meet. The farmer is already suffering from his failure to take a more active part in those business affairs which concern him most intimately, and unless he wakes up to the possibilities of organized scien- tific farming, rural conditions will become much worse than they are at present. Economic stagnation is reinforced by the dreary social conditions on the farm, forming together a vicious circle, each emphasizing the MRS. MARIE TURNER HARVEY THE COUNTRY LIFE MOVEMENT 11 other. Without economic enterprise the farmer is poor. His poverty makes it impossible for him to improve his living conditions or his so- cial habits. And initiative, energy and busi- ness daring cannot develop under the living con- ditions that are to be found on farms all over the country. These conditions are worst, per- haps, where the natural resources are least ad- vantageous for farming, but they are by no means confined to these regions. That they are not a necessary part of country life is proved by the situation in a few parts of the country, where the farmers are prosperous, comfortable, progressive, and influential. The reform of any one isolated feature of farming conditions must then be a makeshift; no matter how well it is adapted to solve the individual problem, the general conditions of farm living will remain in the same unsatisfac- tory state, and will constantly counteract and hamper particular improvements. What is needed is something to shake the farmer from his apathy and time-honored habits of isola- tion; not a lesson in how to produce larger crops to the acre, but something which will make him realize the need of better farming and equip him to find out for himself how it is to be done. Opening up to the fanner the possibilities which 12 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD lie within himself will open to him the doors of comfortable living, prosperity and serviceable citizenship. Doing this effectively means, of course, beginning with the children and raising a new generation who shall be able to take their meager heritage and increase it a thousand- fold. The necessity of an educational attack on country life cannot be over-emphasized, be- cause the failure of the farmer to come up to the standards of the rest of the world to-day is not to be explained by some one evil, but by the farmer himself and his whole life. Generalities about the drudgery and isolation of farm life give so little hint of actual condi- tions as to be almost meaningless to one who has not seen them. The average town-dweller speaks of fertile farm land and sees a picture of a farmer living in a big, comfortable house, surrounded by stretches of fields yielding bum- per crops, living on the fat of the land, subscrib- ing to all the magazines and having leisurely evenings in which to read them, riding over beautiful roads in his Ford, and taking part in a generous neighborhood life that unites the whole community into a prosperous, happy fam- ily. Something approaching this does exist in certain portions of the middle and far West, and there are, of course, well-to-do farmers all THE COUNTRY LIFE MOVEMENT 13 over the country who are keeping up with the times. But even in very rich regions the truth falls so very far short of this rosy picture as to make one hesitate to describe it. A country life commission of a few years back suppressed the bulk of their report because they felt an accurate description of rural conditions would paint such a discouraging picture as to do more harm than good. It is no part of this discussion to go into these conditions in any detail, but a description of a typical farm in a rich farming country will emphasize the fundamental nature of the changes that are necessary. In attempting any description some one re- gion must be selected and certain conditions prevailing there will doubtless be local, but the general picture is not extreme. The country chosen is fertile, the land valuable, and the farmers all American with generations of pio- neer life behind them, and though there is little surplus money, the pinch of actual poverty is very rare. On a large farm, raising grain al- most exclusively, the same fields are planted to the same crops year after year, while the same land lies idle indefinitely, the amount of ferti- lizing done is almost negligible, and no records are kept to show the actual decrease in yield. The farmer looks at his crop, knows it is poor, 14 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD but plants there the next year. The woodland has been destroyed before his time, but he does nothing to replant, and continues to cut the few trees that are left as he needs wood. The farm is stocked with pure bred cows that are cared for with skill and real knowledge, but the poul- try yard contains a few mongrel hens that eat quantities of expensive food and lay the mini- mum number of eggs, which sell for a low price because the supply is small and irregular. There are no fruit trees on the place, except some old apple trees that are not sprayed, and therefore yield only a few bushels of wormy fruit. There is no garden on the farm; a tiny patch like a flower bed is planted with radishes and lettuce in the spring, and some root vege- tables, potatoes, turnips and beets are grown, but fruit and green vegetables are bought in cans at the village grocery store. Thanksgiving pies are made with canned pumpkin. No vege- tables, except roots, are saved for winter use, and no preserves or jellies are made in most homes. Meat is preserved, especially pork; at hog-killing time, bacon and ham are smoked and salt pork put down, and a great deal of sausage is made. To keep this through the year it is partially cooked, packed in pails and covered with boiling grease to seal it. This forms the THE COUNTRY LIFE MOVEMENT 15 staple diet during the winter and through the hot summer until it is gone. The regular menu the year around is pork, potatoes, and hot bread or pancakes. Ill health results and is met with liberal dosings of patent medicines. A story comes of a Southern farmer who was sup- posed to have epileptic fits ; he moved to another part of the country where a varied diet was the rule, and has never had a fit since. Every coun- try doctor and teacher will admit that general poor health is just as prevalent in the country as in the city slum, and that care and hygiene are not nearly so good. Sleeping with shut win- dows and closing everything air-tight in the fall without letting in any fresh air until spring are general habits. The comparative size and comfort of the barns and the house cease to be the joke the casual traveler makes of them if you happen to be the farmer's wife who is doing the work in the house. A square box of a house four rooms, two to a floor, shelter a family of four, and whatever hired help there may be. There are no closets, no furnace, no lights, no running water and no drainage. No attempt has been made to install any labor-saving devices. The fanner's wife gets up at four in the morning, cooks a substantial breakfast of cornmeal mush, 16 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD salt pork, potatoes, coffee and biscuits, helps the men of the household with the milking, takes care of the milk, washes the pans and the sepa- rator, feeds and waters the chickens, carrying the water from the pump to the chicken yard in pails. Then she goes back to the house, carries more water for the housework, heats the water, washes the breakfast dishes, cleans the house, does the washing or ironing, gets dinner for the men who come in from the fields at twelve sharp, feeds the hens again, churns, cleans up, and then has a little leisure in which she can tend to what little vegetable garden there is before it is time to get supper. In the summer months supper often is at eight o 'clock or after, so that every minute of daylight may be spent in the fields. She will help with the evening milking and tend to the milk again, get an eight-o'clock supper, wash the dishes, and her day is done. She probably does a great deal of her own sew- ing, and, of course, there are children who must be cared for in most homes. When we stop to think that every drop of water must be carried into the house and heated on the kitchen range, and all the waste water carried out, that the washing is done in moveable tin tubs, that, in fact, nearly every bit of this work is done in the very hardest way possible, it does not seem THE COUNTRY LIFE MOVEMENT 17 strange that the relatively unnecessary occu- pations of canning and gardening are neglected. To get through such a routine as this and keep any energy and interest for study or recreation requires ability and training. But the farm woman grows up seeing the work done in this way, erpecting to help with some of the out- door chores, without training to enable her to see and weigh values, or any knowledge of bet- ter ways of doing things. The farm house is the last place on the average farm where any money is spent for improvements, chiefly be- cause the increased returns from a comfortable home and leisure are less tangible than from a new field or a new piece of farm machinery. The lamps are not lit at night. Writing a letter is a special chore, and is put off as long as possible. Reading and writing are so little a part of the normal routine of life that all facility disappears. They know how to read and write, but it is such hard work that there is no pleasure and very little profit in it. A gen eral contempt for "book farming" makes them refuse to listen to advice from agricultural col- leges and stations and leaves them wholly at a loss in dealing with a new problem. "A nigger and a mule" are the best and only reliable teach- ers of farming. To prove a new method it must 18 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD be watched through its whole course and the results seen before it arouses even interest. A new pest or disease so long as it does not affect the main crop is allowed to run its course, and the crop it attacks is given up. A common way of dealing with insects is to beat them off the plants with brush. The same lack of foresight is shown in the way the farmer buys and sells. He does not find out about other crops or even about his special crop in other regions. He almost never combines with his neighbors to gain any of the advantages of cooperative buy- ing and selling. He puts himself in the hands of the middle man and distributor, and although he has complete control of the product, makes no effort to say anything about what shall be done with it. Each farm is a business in itself. Imagine a factory head or office manager who ran his business without paying any attention to what his competitors were doing, without in- vestigating the improvements other factories were installing, without reading newspapers or trade journals, without even trying to run his business so that it would yield him either a fair return on his investment or leisure for the en- joyment of life. Yet this is what the majority of farmers are doing. A pamphlet on the advantages of alfalfa THE COUNTRY LIFE MOVEMENT 19 raising, or an easy way to build an ice-house, is not going to arouse much response; very prob- ably it will not even be read by the farmer whose interest and hope in life stretches no farther than the accomplishment of the day's round of work. He must acquire a new point of view in all things before he will make changes and im- provements in specific things. What is needed is a remaking of the structure of country life, an improvement in the social habits and the work habits of the whole farm family. The schools, the churches, and the granges are the most po- tent factors for influence. Of these the school is by far the most important, since it is the one influence in the community that touches all homes alike, and since it has the task and the opportunity to mould the lives and the opinions of the group who will soon be the community. The little one-room school exerts an influence in the life of every child that goes to it that can- not be over-estimated ; and every child in a dis- trict spends the best part of the year there for the most important years of his life. The chil- dren take home what they learn and thus the life of the whole family is influenced. If the school is working with a definite aim and with social ideals, the immediate influence of the school on the whole community is easily traced. 20 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD The school not only reaches the most impres- sionable element of a neighborhood in its work, but is the natural center for the entire commun- ity life. It and it alone belongs to the whole community, everyone in the district has the right and the opportunity to take an active part in its conduct, and in it everyone meets with- out distinctions of wealth, race or religion. Churches, granges, and clubs may exert a more powerful influence on their own membership, but they do not bring the community together as a unit. There are regions where there are no churches, granges or clubs, and even where they exist in a highly flourishing condition, there are always certain families that take no part; there is always more than one church and the basis of clubs is an exclusive mem- bership. Thus in spite of their influence for good, these institutions break up a neigh- borhood into different groups, with different in- terests and different methods that tend toward rivalry and increase the lines of cleavage as they become more successful. On the other hand, no district is so poor or so scattered that it does not have its school house, nor so busy or clique that everyone in it who has a child does not use it, and all meet in it on the common ground of their interest in their children. THE COUNTRY LIFE MOVEMENT 21 Every country community already has in its school the necessary machinery for changing any or all of the local conditions it wishes to at- tack. In its school building it has a meeting place which can become the center of the social or educational life of the adults as well as of the children, not merely a building which could be used in lieu of any other gathering place, but the natural, logical center of the common neigh- borhood life. If the school is to be used as the center forl the improvement of country life, we must have 1 a different kind of school from that found in \ the majority of rural districts. It is not so much - better buildings or modern methods of teaching (hat are needed as a new spirit, a new vision of the possibilities of country life and of the school in that life. In regions where there exists the stagnation we have described, the schools of course reflect the same conditions. They are far from being a ready made agent for the remaking of farm life, and at first sight may seem to be merely one of its numberless phases needing change. But those who have seen the changes in a whole community brought about by a changed school must believe that with a new kind of school will come new social conditions, better agriculture, better health and betteT citizenship. 22 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD The school is the point of departure for im- proved conditions because children are the most teachable element in a community, because they represent perhaps the strongest common in- terest in any group of people, and because in the school house every community has a center which belongs to all alike and in which all may meet on an equal footing. Furthermore the education of one generation of farm children in a socialized school should banish forever the necessity for reform and semi-philanthropic movements originating from the outside. At the present practically every scheme that is launched to help the farmer is manned by people who are not themselves farmers. The farmers ' shortcomings are far-reaching enough to stir people not directly concerned with agriculture to try to point the way to greater efficiency and happiness on the farm. The right kind of school will make outside interest unnecessary for the coming generation, for it will teach country children how to develop the possibilities of their environment. Such schools are at pres- ent few in number, and are usually started through the initiative of an individual teacher, a normal school, or a state board, the im- petus starting from without as in other rural reforms. But though few, these schools THE COUNTRY LIFE MOVEMENT 23 have furnished such convincing demonstration of the value of a good school to a community that farmers everywhere are already demand- ing more from their schools, and are expecting them to serve the interests of the whole district. It is not suggested that the rural school is the only proper agent for working for a better country life, or that the kind of work done by the agricultural colleges, for instance, is not both valuable and necessary. But we do believe emphatically that in its school every dis- trict already has the machinery for getting over this type of work most effectively, and that the widest possible use of the school plant is one of the essential steps in the development of the new rural school. Take the case of the agri- cultural college which is trying to conduct a propaganda for improvement in some specific practice. At present its only method of reach- ing the farmer is through the mail or by an oc- casional lecture or meeting delivered in some more or less central location. Pamphlets and lectures are too apt to be effective only with the people who are already converted to the point of view they present, or who are at least in a questioning frame of mind. Consequently the college works long and hard for very meager results. No campaign necessarily so scattered 24 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD and working at such long distance, can be as effective as one conducted on the spot through an agent already in intimate touch with a whole community. Working through the school, the college could without more work reach every farm in the neighborhood. The school district offers an organization unit small enough to reach everyone at any time ; the school building furnishes the central meeting place and the com- munity work in turn increases the value and reality of the children's school life. Every dis- trict school is already functioning as a vital part of the community life, and anything there- fore which, is really a part of the school must function again in the community. The use of the school plant as a local clearing house must, of course, strongly influence the character of the school itself. However desir- able such use might be for the adults of the community, it is, of course, legitimate only if it also contributes to the realization of the edu- cational ideals for which the school is working. The school is first for the children of the com- munity; to teach them so that they may make for themselves a happy and useful life in what- ever walk of life they choose. Making the school a vital and necessary part of the social and economic life of its district cannot fail, THE COUNTRY LIFE MOVEMENT 25 however, to make that school a better place in which to train children to be healthy, happy children and responsible, efficient citizens. And so long as social and economic conditions in our rural districts remain as they are it will be al- most impossible, without making such use of the school, to bring up a new generation of farmers who shall not live in the same desolate and half-hearted way as their parents. CHAPTER n THE LITTLE RED SCHOOL HOUSE TODAY EVERYONE who has worked to improve our schools has had to meet the argument that since the schools were good enough for our fathers it is only putting on airs to talk of changing them for our children. In the country this tra- dition has become symbolized by "The Little Red School House." A belief in its almost magic efficacy offers a real stumbling block to the teacher in her efforts to have her school keep pace with the changes in the world around it. America is justly proud of this far-famed insti- tution, but we are apt to forget that the ground for our pride is the fact that under extremely difficult pioneer conditions we still kept some kind of school, not that this school was so good in itself. It is true that many of our greatest men got most of their education in the district school, but it is very unlikely that the school was the cause of their greatness. These men would undoubtedly have achieved distinction if they had never been to school at all, or even 26 THE LITTLE RED SCHOOL HOUSE 27 if they had been to the most modern and model of schools. The little red school house did not have a rule for teaching that guaranteed suc- cess : Only stop to think of the thousands of its children for whom its opportunities and train- ing were inadequate and that superstition van- ishes. Its claim to our pride and affection lies in the fact that in spite of privation and the al- most overwhelming hardships of isolation, cold winters, bad roads and the necessity of keeping children at home for farm work, it kept the fires of learning and ambition burning. Our forefathers believed in an equal opportunity for all and part of that opportunity was the tradition of culture and a belief in educa- tion. The first one-room schools kept that tradition alive and tried to put the belief into practice. The question that we must ask of our schools, both in the city and in the country, is not whether they, in the face of great diffi- culties, did what they could for our grandfath- ers, but are they to-day doing all that we want done for our children. We must not ask if they have produced great men, but if they help the commonest man to use his meager opportunities and to strive for a steady purpose. That the country school should do this is imperative, for 28 NEW SCHOOLS FOB OLD on it rests the burden of the prosperity of our whole country. "Without a body of contented, enlightened and ambitious farmers, keeping their farms from generation to generation, agri- culture cannot flourish and as it flourishes the whole nation prospers. There are great regions of the country where the farmers' ignorance extends to their own jobs and their only ambi- tion is for a change. To anyone knowing these conditions the school offers the only sure and practical way of changing this. Good schools for the country are not simply an inspiring ideal for the teacher to hold before herself, they are an economic necessity for the city dweller as well as for the farmer. In the past this country has offered such vast stretches of fer- tile land that we could prosper with poor farm- ing. When the old land was exhausted the shift- less, ignorant farmer could make a living by moving to new ground. There is at present practically no more new land to exploit, and continued exploitation of the old means certain and swift ruin to the farmer with consequent hardship to the country at large. All over the country we are successfully attempting to meet the tremendous responsibility resting on the country school. But there are still many thou- sands of one-room schools which would seem THE LITTLE RED SCHOOL HOUSE 29 impossible nightmares to the teacher in the or- dinary town or city school. i In 1915 it was estimated that there were about 200,000 one-room schools in the United States ; 50,000 of these are in the corn belt and 10,000 are in the state of Missouri alone. ^ Many of these are doing the best they can with the conditions which they find around them. This book hopes to show how that best was reached in one district and how it is a practical possibil- ity for them all. There are, however, thousands of others that let their resources for a good school lie entirely unexplored. When we stop to examine the special problems and difficulties of the rural school it does not seem strange that this should be so. Each one of the 200,000 or more one-room schools in the country is a com- plete unit in itself, isolated in position and or- ganization, and employing one teacher on whom falls the entire responsibility for the education of the district. Suppose a normal school pupil decides to specialize in rural education, because she be- lieves in the possibilities of country life. She spends part of two years studying the problems of the country school, the best curriculum for it, and special methods of teaching; in a progres- sive normal school she will learn something of 30 NEW SCHOOLS FOB OLD rural economics and sociology. Equipped with a diploma and a fund of hopes and ideals she looks for a school. Immediately she meets her first disappointment ; she is young and inexperi- enced, therefore the cautious local school board decides she should be cheap. They offer her perhaps as low a salary as $35.00 a month for the eight months of school. If she is determined and has good recommendations from her col- lege she may find a school willing to pay even $50.00 a month. She has committed herself to a year of comparative privation and has learned that her chances for future prosperity are not very bright ; if she is entirely dependent on her own earnings she probably decides that one year of this is all she can afford. The second discouragement comes when the teacher begins to look about for a place to live. Perhaps she thinks that boarding in the homes of her pupils will offer her an opportunity to become quickly and easily acquainted and learn her district. When she arrives she is apt to find that she is taken rather grudgingly into some family whose turn it is to board the teacher. Because of her small salary she can- not pay what her board is worth and is not, therefore, an especially desirable guest, and she must go to that house which has agreed to THE LITTLE BED SCHOOL HOUSE 31 receive her. They have a house full already and she must share her bed-room with one of the girls in the family. This makes evening work extremely difficult if not impossible ; grad- ually she succumbs and attempts only to keep up with to-morrow's lessons. The women of the household are overworked, and the teacher, sen- sitive about her inadequate payment for board, is apt, in order to quiet her conscience, to give up more time than she can afford to help with the housework. Perhaps the only available home is a long way from the school house ; the teacher must walk this distance twice a day in all kinds of weather. This not only fatigues her, but shortens her work day ; in the winter to reach home by nightfall she must leave the school house with her pupils. She may become attached to the family she is living with, or she may find herself forced into the most intimate relations with a family whose tastes and inter- ests are entirely different from hers. In either case her physical surroundings are a daily handicap to good teaching, and there is no place in the district where she can find a home that will offer her leisure and comfort. Under such conditions the teacher cannot look forward to a permanent home in the community, and the natural alternative is to look for another com- 32 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD mnnity, if not to another occupation offering more suitable living conditions. Rural teach- ers, in a great many cases, have put up year after year with seemingly impossible living con- ditions. Sometimes teachers are utterly unable to find a single family in the district willing to accept them as boarders. The law provides that every child shall have school opportunities, but it sometimes defeats itself by failing to pro- vide a living place for the teacher. An optimis- tic estimate gives "over 600" teachers' cottages in the United States in 1916. Many of these are in districts where the one-room school has already been replaced by a consolidated school ; very few of the 200,000 one-room school teach- ers, therefore, have any assurance of finding a comfortable home. The conditions the new teacher finds at her school house are not much more encouraging. An ugly box of a building, long in need of paint, stands out bleakly in the middle of a lot left to the school because no one wants it. No attempt has been made to beautify the surroundings or to supply play apparatus for the children. Water is supplied by a dirty well or more often by a cistern; it is not uncommon to have no water at all, especially if a neighbor's well is within reach. The toilet facilities are in the THE LITTLE RED SCHOOL HOUSE 33 yard, the doorways unscreened, boys and girls accommodated in the same building or in out- houses facing each other, and these in a state which makes them almost unsafe for the use of children. Every country teacher knows the na- ture of these conditions and can describe indi- vidual schools where they are unbelievably dis- graceful. Years of neglect, of defilement, and destruction wrought by tramps cause conditions which are a menace to the morals and health of all the pupils. The outside door of the school house opens into the class room; the children's hats, coats and lunches are hung on pegs around the wall ; their rubbers and wet shoes make puddles on the floor. The floor needs a good scrubbing. An ancient dictionary lying on a broken organ looks as if it had never been dusted. Three old atlases are sticking through the book-case door. The plaster has fallen from the ceiling and been brushed into a pile at the foot of the black- board. The woodwork is painted an ugly pink which has become blackened by a leaky stove pipe. The walls once papered with a large fig- ured design in brown have peeled and faded. The blackboard is fastened so high on the wall that the little children have to stand on tip-toe to reach it. A picture of Lincoln, with the glass 34 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD broken, is hung high under the ceiling, and a panel of Bible pictures, placed so high that the objects are almost indistinguishable, has slipped askew. There are no other pictures and no maps. A great circular stove in one corner of the room sends a rusty pipe to the opposite corner. In spite of a steel ventilating screen around the stove, the temperature varies by 20 degrees in different parts of the room on a cold day. Some schools put the stove in the center of the room. In this way more children can be heated, if not overheated, by it, but, on the other hand, the children near the windows are even colder. Every two or three winters one of the big boys will have his feet frozen as he sits studying at a remote desk. The windows stretch down opposite sides of the room and have no shades ; the light streams in, hurting the pupils' eyes as they work. Most rural schools do not supply any janitor service ; the teacher herself, "with what help she can get from the pupils, has to keep the school room in order. Winter mornings she must get there in time to start the fire, she also must herself sweep and dnst if she wants the building clean. The room is big and the children track in a lot of dirt, so that it is nearly impossible to keep the place in perfect order in addition to her hard A GLIMPSE OF THE OLD SCHOOLROOM. TYPICAL OF A THOU- SAND OTHERS OK ITS KIND THE LITTLE BED SCHOOL HOUSE 35 day's teaching. As a result the room is only half kept at best, and many schools are deplor- ably dirty and untidy. A school to be good must be clean, but the country teacher in order to be clean has to add so much housework to her teaching that it is often impossible for her to do the other work well. Not only are the surroundings of the class room unattractive, but the school equipment is inadequate. The room is furnished with a teacher's desk, a movable chair or two, and sta- tionary desks and seats for the children, and often with only benches for the youngest pupils. Sometimes there is a small organ, usually a dictionary, an old atlas, and an out-of-date map or two. In many states each district is free to decide how much of the pupils ' individual equip- ment is to be furnished. Consequently in many schools chalk is literally the only school supply bought by the board. Every piece of paper, every pencil, every drop of ink is brought by the individual pupil for his own use. This makes it difficult to insure even the minimum supply of paper, pencil and text books necessary for the daily lessons, and causes constant inconvenience because of the variety of material used. Slates are still frequently used by pupils whose par- ents are economically inclined, and the teacher 36 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD must struggle against the dirt and bad writing that goes with them. The practical impossibil- ity of introducing a diversified curriculum with- out any control over school equipment is obvious. Many a teacher has had to cut out drawing lessons or give up the use of systematic note-books because it was impossible to make all the parents see their value and buy the neces- sary paper and books. Districts with an en- rollment of from twenty to thirty children ex- pect $300.00 to $400.00 to cover the entire ex- penses of the school for a year. This money is spent for the teacher's salary, 300 or so bushels of coal, two boxes of chalk and a broom; and then harassed directors wonder why they can- not find a good teacher who will stay more than one year. *> The poor school buildings, the lack of equip- ment and the absurdly small sums voted for school taxes can all be traced to the failure of the community to see the relation between the school and the general problem of country life. Of this problem every farmer is more or less conscious, and often his analysis of its difficul- ties and their causes is keen and just. But it is just beginning to be recognized that the school house is the best point of attack on these diffi- culties. The farmer appreciates the value of a THE LITTLE BED SCHOOL HOUSE 37 good education, but is apt to think that it is not a necessity for the boy or girl who stays on the farm. They accept with an unfortunate com- pliance the idea that the really smart, ambitious child will want to leave the farm for life in a town, and in consequence they are willing that he should go to the town for the education pre- paratory to city life. When they once realize that farming is a profession requiring an edu- cation and special training they will appreciate the importance and possibilities of the country schools and be willing to spend more money on them. The drawbacks to teaching in a rural school will, of course, melt away when school taxes are increased. But fanners are not the only class of people who must be awakened to the necessity of a change. In many states the law fixes a lower tax rate for the country schools than for the city. In Missouri, for instance, the maximum tax for a rural school district is sixty-five cents on the hundred dollars, while urban schools may vote a tax as high as one dollar and ten cents on the hundred. To one familiar with the problem peculiar to the coun- try school this seems a particularly unfortunate law; the country school board needs to be en- couraged by every outside influence to spend more, not less, on its school. 38 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD Conditions of life in the country are the cause of other problems which make the task of the rural teacher harder than that of her town neighbor. The most constant of these is, per- haps, the small size of the school. Farms are scattered ; and the school district must be small enough so that all the children in it can reach the school house. The result is that one teacher and one room is enough to take care of all the children in the district. But these children are of all ages, from the beginner of six to children in their teens who continue in the school in lieu of an available high school. One assumes at first sight that one teacher should be able to manage 20 to 30 pupils, but when we consider that in the group there are children doing the work of every grade, and some the work of several different grades, we realize that the teacher must use special methods. Eecitation periods must be very short, if the ordinary methods of grading are attempted, and they are short in most one-room schools. The pupils must be left for long periods to study lessons from books without any help or direc- tion, except for the few seconds that the teacher can steal between recitations. The teacher is kept jumping from one lesson and one grade of children to another with a rapidity that is THE LITTLE BED SCHOOL HOUSE 39 bound to make for mechanical work. The wise teacher, in order to cover the ground prescribed in the state course of study, will, of course, com- bine grades wherever possible and will cover two subjects in one lesson, grammar and spell- ing or English and geography, for instance. In a one-room school in the middle West, con- sidered quite a model for the neighborhood, the following program was actually carried out every day by an experienced teacher. There were no second or fifth-grade children, so there remained six grades. Twenty-six pupils were enrolled with an average attendance of about twenty. The day was divided into five and ten- minute recitation periods, while each grade worked on some assigned task at their desks for periods of an hour, and then recited. School opened with a very brief morning exercise, then followed one lesson in arithmetic, three in read- ing for different grades and one in grammar. There was a recess of twenty minutes, and then the teacher "heard" one class in arithmetic, one in spelling, three in succession in arithmetic and one in history. The afternoon session was di- vided into two periods with another twenty- minute recess. Before recess the teacher gave two lessons in geography, one in reading, and one in spelling, besides one to the whole school 40 NEW SCHOOLS FOE OLD in writing. After recess there were six more lessons, two in reading, two in geography, and two in spelling. Thus the teacher directed twenty-two different recitations every day. She was following exactly the model program recom- mended to teachers by the state superintendent of schools, except that her work was rather easier as she had only six grades instead of eight. Another solution of the problem of the un- graded room that is sometimes offered by state superintendents is that of alternating grades. That is, one year the teacher will give her pupils the course of study for the first, third, fifth and seventh grades, and the next the second, fourth, sixth and eighth. Although this makes fewer classes to teach in one day, it is probably harder than the other way, for if such a plan is to work at all the teacher must put the pupils through the work whether they are ready for it or not. One year she may have to carry children through work that is much too hard, but the next year these same children will do the work of the grade below, which is correspondingly too easy. Of course, there is no doubt that it is harder to teach a school room where there are pupils from six to sixteen than a class where all the THE LITTLE RED SCHOOL HOUSE 41 children are about the same age. But there are certain advantages, for the children especially, when different ages work together. The ordi- nary methods of trying to impose the system of grades on a room which of necessity must re- main ungraded make it difficult to gain these advantages, and the hardships of teaching under these conditions need no other emphasis than their description. Another way of meeting the problem will be discussed in a later chapter. The other problems of organization to be met by the rural teacher, while not so different from those of the town teacher, are harder because they must be faced alone. Every state has its department of education and most of them have specialists who devote all their time to the rural schools. But in a state with ten thousand one- room schools the help that any one teacher can get from these specialists must be limited to pamphlets and circular letters. She can get plenty of advice and discussion of general prob- lems and methods, but there is no one with whom she can share the responsibility for the hundred and one questions and new situations that must be met daily. When there is a county superin- tendent she may or may not have more direct cooperation in her work. If the county fails to make any provision for their superintendent's 42 NEW SCHOOLS FOB OLD traveling expenses, he has no better opportuni- ties than the state officials to find out about the actual conditions in his schools. Along with this the teacher is required to follow a printed course of study, and in some states the curricu- lum is laid down in the greatest detail. She must take the conditions which she finds in her own district and bend them to fit a curriculum which was made without any study of her spe- cial problems or her peculiar qualifications for meeting them. If there is any attempt to do more than the most perfunctory, routine teach- ing, it cannot fail to be a difficult task. The teacher has often no opportunity whatever to lighten it by consultation and discussion with other teachers. Books and pamphlets she can have, provided she has the means to buy them and the time and strength to read them ; and for cases of discipline that become acute she can appeal to her school board; otherwise her isola- tion is complete. This isolation is usually ac- cepted without comment. But there can be no doubt that the rural teacher's burdens would be lighter if she had the opportunities for discus- sion and sharing of experiences and responsibil- ity that are a part of the daily program of the teacher in every school with more than one room. Too much talking shop is probably bad A DETAIL OK THE SCHOOL INTERIOR IN THE OLD DAYS THE LITTLE RED SCHOOL HOUSE 43 IP for persons of any profession, but the other ex- treme, no chance whatever to talk shop, cannot fail to be worse. Conditions of life in the country are respon- sible for another group of problems which are peculiar to the country school. Attendance at a country school is always more or less irregu- lar; the teacher expects it and must adjust her program to meet it. Pupils must often walk long distances to school ; in bad weather this is impossible for the little ones, and a very severe winter storm often closes a school for a day or so. Many farmers are quite willing to drive their children to school in cold or wet weather, but there are thousands of districts all over the country where the roads are so bad that in very wet weather and during the spring thaws they become impassable for teams. The result is that during the muddy seasons half of the school living at the greatest distance will be absent for days at a stretch. While the attendance of the little children is broken up by the weather, that of the older ones, boys especially, is almost equally irregular because of the farm work. In the ordinary farming country the older boys sel- dom start school for a month or so after it has opened. Their work is essential at home for gathering and storing the fall crops. There is 44 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD no hired help available for this, and even if there were the average farmer could not afford it. Farming is not an occupation yielding any margin of profit, and it requires the efforts of the whole family to make it a self-supporting occupation. Therefore, at least under present conditions of farming, the teacher must accept the withdrawal of her older boys for fall har- vesting and for another period of planting in the spring. Often the girls who are doing the same class work as these boys can remain in school, and when the boys return they find them- selves left far behind. To compensate for these conditions, the boy who stays on the home farm can often attend school, for part of the year, longer than the boy in the city. In the middle of the winter farm work is comparatively light and can be managed by the adults of the family dur- ing these months ; therefore, there is no reason why the boy should not go to school for as many winters as the school can contribute to his edu- tion. While the girls lose fewer days of school than the boys because of the lack of hired labor on the farm, they usually have to stay at home to look after the house in any family emergency. If the mother is sick the burden of the entire household falls on the daughters, and if anyone else in the house is sick at least one of THE LITTLE RED SCHOOL HOUSE 45 the girls is needed to take care of this extra work. Fortunately for the teacher the season of the year when the rough weather keeps the little ones at home is the very time when the older children are most free to come to school ; while the pleasant fall and spring weather brings the little ones to school when the big boys are kept at home for farm work. But even so, the teacher must make constant adjustments and struggle with the difficulties of classes where some pupils are advanced and others much re- tarded. In 1910 the enrollment in the rural! schools of the country was 11,100,553, and thej daily attendance only about seven and a half million. The average daily attendance in the rural schools is 68 per cent and in urban schools! it is 79 per cent. Probably the number of tru- ants or indifferent parents is not larger in the country than in the city, so this difference in attendance can be traced largely to conditions due to country life ; conditions which are likely to change only as country life changes. Besides irregular attendance many schools are further hampered by short terms. That is, the difficulties described cause a great many school boards to fix a very short school year. While children in towns and cities are going to 46 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD school from eight to ten months a year there are thousands of country children whose school is open for only three months in the year. In many states the length of the school term re- quired by law is longer for the city than for the rural school. The same short-sighted policy that forces the rural school board to spend less money on its school than its city neighbor, al- lows it to keep that same school house closed for more months of the year. This condition is so general that the average term for rural schools all over the country is forty-six days shorter than it is for the urban schools. Weather difficulties and small taxes are met in another way in some schools, which although it insures a full school year cuts into the value of the work done tremendously. In order to avoid the period of bad roads in the late winter, some schools have a divided term. School starts in the fall at the usual time and runs for three or four months, then closes for the worst months of the winter and opens again for two or three months in the spring. During the spring term the older boys are usually not even expected to go to school. The divided term means scant in- terest in the school, shifting teachers, poor at- tendance, and all the troubles that go with an inferior school. There is usually a new teacher, THE LITTLE RED SCHOOL HOUSE 47 not only every year in these schools, but every term. This is partly because the teacher is anxious to find a school where she will not have to stop for a long vacation just as she has her school under way, and partly because the board tries to save money on the spring term. Usually only the younger children attend it, so the school is smaller and a cheaper teacher suffices. Schools that are willing to pay a salary of $65.00 for the winter term will try to get a teacher for $30.00 or $40.00 for the spring. This new teacher comes in to finish up the re- quired year's work without knowing the meth- ods of the former teacher or the abilities of her pupils, and after these pupils have spent two months of enforced idleness, shut in their homes by bad weather. It is no wonder that the di- vided term has come to stand for a shiftless, in- different school district. Nearly every country teacher can probably think of a number of situations peculiar to the country which cause her difficult moments and problems that are not touched upon here. But enough has been said to indicate the types of problems that must be met by the rural school. The cause of most of them can be summed up by isolation and poverty. Isolation when combined with bad roads forces a small school, it means 48 NEW SCHOOLS FOE OLD irregular attendance and often a short school year. Isolation forces the teacher into incon- venient living quarters, cuts her off from con- tact with other teachers, and hinders school officials in any efforts to understand and deal with her problems at first hand. The traditional poverty of the farmer, usually without founda- tion in fact, serves as an excuse for poor build- ings, lack of upkeep, insufficient equipment and low salaries; and has been used by economic- ally minded legislators to force low taxes and allow short terms. These difficulties would largely disappear if the schools had more pu- pils. This is shown in the nation-wide move- ment for consolidation. Wherever several school districts have been able to combine and build one large, modern building, employ several teachers, and transport pupils to and from school, many of the problems of isolation and most of those of poverty have been solved. Some states, Indiana among them, are rapidly progressing towards the time when they can point to a complete reorganization of their rural schools upon the consolidation basis. But in order to make consolidation possible, certain conditions are necessary. First, the people in two or three adjoining districts must want it at the same time. Until the people who THE LITTLE RED SCHOOL HOUSE 49 are sending their children to school realize the necessity for improving school conditions and see their way to becoming part of a consoli- dated district, the one-room school will remain. But even in districts where the farmers have outgrown the tradition of extreme economy and of letting well enough alone, it is not always possible to combine school districts. In the sparsely populated portions of the country a small one-room school can take care of all the children in a number of square miles ; if the size of this district was increased two or three times, distances would be so great that it would be im- possible for many children to go to school at all, even with school transportation. But in most regions where population is more or less scat- tered the roads are so bad that transportation is impossible. Like good schools, good roads come only to fairly populous and prosperous regions, and without good roads consolidation is impossible. It may seem an exaggeration to say that there are any considerable portions of the country where roads are so bad that a ride of five or six miles twice a day settles the fate of a good school. But the mud road is still the usual thing in this country, and clay is more common than sandy soil. A dirt road and a clay soil means that during wet weather and 50 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD winter thaws, roads become bottomless, wheels sink in to the hubs, horses flounder knee-deep, unable to pull anything but the lightest wagons, and even these stick fast in hollows. Automo- biles are, of course, useless on such roads. But as roads improve and remote regions become more thickly settled, consolidation will spread. This is especially true if in the meanwhile teach- ers and farmers turn their attention to the im- provement of the existing one-room schools. There are thousands of rural districts where consolidation cannot come for a very long time, but a great many of the difficulties described can be overcome in the very buildings where they are now most exaggerated. Forcing con- solidation on unwilling districts or under im- possible conditions is no more successful than other attempts at coercion. It has been tried in some places and the results have not justified it. Some school districts voted for consolida- tion and then refused to vote the money neces- sary to build the new building and run the school. The first step towards the improvement of rural education is to make the widest possible development of the one-room school. Consoli- dation will follow naturally in the districts where it is practical. Consolidation has of late PORTER SCHOOL DISTRICT. 181 4 - 1815 or*. * Ites** Cfr **^* *i k **'" ii* > ^^_ 3*i : il? j* 'r a *!*" 9 ^Mp v- i *^' ~ . . Tii" i i --r Tir 44** . * * V* bijtf | , - -lr ^H.r :V., . t *Kj t |J>~ S?.A 'Iio ^ ... *MA J ' UOA ^lA* = ^ 4 OA. Vren - 8 sq. mi. Assessed valuation $112,840. : numeral ion 66. Scal;--10*=lntL __Owner's home. ^ I ^ Tenant's home. g \ttcndance, 1012 26. l-iKures = Number children 01 Vttendance. lwir> 46. school age in family. lax rate. 1810 - 40* on $100. Roads. MAP OF THE DlSTRKT INDICATING THE SCATTERED POPU- LATION THE LITTLE BED SCHOOL HOUSE 51 received more attention than any other phase of the rural school question. But this book is to concern itself with what can be done now in the 200,000 one-room schools of the country, not only to minimize the problems already reviewed, but to vitalize school life and teach the coming generation to make the most of their opportuni- ties as farmers. Mrs. Harvey 's school at Kirksville, Missouri, has done this successfully for five years. Shei has furnished a demonstration of what a small, rundown school in a divided district can do to unite and stimulate the whole community by giv- ing the children the kind of education they need. Her work should prove especially helpful to rural teachers because it has been carried on under such typical conditions as to inspire every teacher with the hope of accomplishing the same results without resources or equip- ment beyond those given by any school board. CHAPTER in HOW PORTER FOUND A SOLUTION OF THE SCHOOL PROBLEM r THE Porter School is in the northern part of Missouri, in a district that lies next to the city of Kirksville. A few years ago there was noth- ing to distinguish it from hundreds of other one- room schools throughout the state. To-day the school is a model not only for the whole state, but for rural teachers all over the country ; and it is a model in the true sense of the word, for what has been accomplished has been done with- out any greater material resources than are at the disposal of any school district. The school is the work of Mrs. Harvey ; but her work would never have been possible if the parents of the district had not felt the need of a new school, and had not been willing to work hard them- selves to improve conditions. The school house is an oblong, one-room building, with an acre of school yard, situated in the exact center of the nine square miles of the district. The site was about the most unattrac- tive in the district; there was not a tree in the 53 HOW PORTER FOUND A SOLUTION 53 yard nor anywhere in the neighborhood. But the building had to be there so that no portion of the district should have the advantage over another in the matter of distance. The house was built twenty years ago at a total cost of $600.00 L and. until 1912. had been left just as it was finished at that time. There was no base- ment and no foundation, clap-boarding was off in many places, the paint had peeled and half the shutters were down. The well was only half covered, the outbuildings were in dreadful shape; signs of constant occupation by tramps were everywhere. Inside, the room was in no better condition; the plaster was off the walls in many places, a hideous figured brown paper was discolored and flapping. There were no shades at the windows and many lights were broken. The blackboards were too high for the little children to reach; there were no pictures and no books. A huge stove in the middle made much dirt and only half heated the room. Chil- dren occasionally froze their feet sitting at their desks, although the stove was red-hot. Along the edge of the Porter district ran a railroad and a state road, both highways for tramps. For years they used the school house as their hotel, abusing the place in every pos- sible way, and making it unsafe for the teacher 54 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD to go alone to the building in the morning. In fact, the tramps made impossible any attempt to keep the place clean, attractive and homelike. It was no use to repair or stock the place, as the work would be undone over night. This situ- ation had been accepted for so long that the whole community honestly believed that any at- tempt to lock doors or keep the tramps out would result in barn burnings or some other form of outrage. The district was infested with tramps who, so long as they were allowed to use the school house unhampered, left the farm- houses alone. The neglect that was shown on the school premises was also visible in the attitude of most of the community towards the school. They realized that conditions were bad, so bad that no one sent his children there if he could make any other arrangement. Lack of interest, trouble over the school, and neighborhood hard- feeling were becoming a tradition, unfortunate but unavoidable. There had been a violent quarrel at the time the building was erected and although the school had enjoyed periods of suc- cess and prosperity since, its proximity to the city was supposed to make it inevitably a sec- ond-rate and makeshift affair. Its general standing is indicated by this notice, which at HOW PORTER FOUND A SOLUTION 55 one time was nailed to the door by the school board : "Rules By which to Govern or controle Lewellen School in Dis No 3 Prompt Obediance by all. there shall be no fighting swearing quarreling or vulgar language on the play ground or on the Road to or from School" Signed by the Board. For some time before the school was reorgan- ized it had been going steadily downhill, until there were only about seven children in attend- ance. The school had a divided term, and a new teacher each term, so that the children never had the same teacher more than five suc- cessive months. It had a very low rating in the county and was thought a hopeless place to look for improvement. There was no commun- ity interest in keeping it going, very few people went to school meetings, sometimes too few to elect a new board, and once only the board it- self. Year after year a handful of conscientious 56 NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD men served on the board and kept some kind of school open. The resources of the district were sufficient .i to enable it to have a good school, as it has since proved. There are nine square miles of fertile -