George Herbert Betts

“ The rural teacher does not know the technique of the schoolroom. The organizing of a school, the proper classification of pupils, the assignment of studies, the arrangement of a program of studies and recitation, the applications of suitable regulations and rules for the running of the school, are all matters requiring expert knowledge and skill. Yet the rural teacher has to undertake them without instruction in their principles and without supervisory guidance or help. No wonder that the rural school is poorly organized and managed. ”

“ The youth, immaturity, and blindness of childhood make it impossible, of course, for children to conceive of their school in a spirit of full appreciation. On the other hand, the very nature of childhood is responsiveness and readiness of coöperation in any form of interesting activity,—is loyalty of attitude toward what is felt to minister to personal happiness and well-being. In so far, therefore, as there exists any lack of loyalty and coöperation of pupils toward their school, the reasons for such defection are to be sought first of all in the school, and not in the child. ”

“ Adjoining a prosperous farm, with its large house, its accompanying barns, silos, machine houses, and all the equipment necessary to modern farming, is the little schoolhouse. It is a dilapidated shell of a rectangular box, barren of every vestige of beauty or attractiveness both inside and out. ”

“ The race has lived its thousands or millions of years; the individual lives but a few score. What former generations took centuries to work out the child can spend only a few months or a few years upon. Hence he must waste no time and opportunity; he must make no false step in his learning, for he cannot in his short life retrieve his mistakes. It is the work of the teacher, through instruction and guidance, that is, through teaching, to save the child time in his learning and development, and to make sure that he does not lose his opportunity. ”

“ If we grant the economic ability to support good schools, then the curriculum offered by any type of school, the scope of subject-matter given the pupils to master, is a measure of the educational ideals of those maintaining and using the schools. If the curriculum is broad, and representative of the various great fields of human culture; if it relates itself to the life and needs of its patrons; if it is adapted to the interests and activities of its pupils, it may be said that the people believe in education as a right of the individual and as a preparation for successful living. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These questions are of supreme importance, for the question of attitude, quite as much as that of ability, determines the use made of opportunity.
It must be admitted that throughout our entire school system there remains something to be desired in the spirit of coöperation between pupils and schools. The feeling of loyalty which the child has for his home does not extend commensurately to the school. Too often the school is looked upon as something forced upon the child, for his welfare, perhaps, but after all not as forming an interesting and vital part of his present experience. ”

“ Rural population is steadily decreasing in proportion to the total aggregate of population. Interest in education is at a low ebb, the farm children having educational opportunities below those of any other class of our people. For, while town and city schools have been improving until they show a high type of efficiency, the rural school has barely held its own, or has, in many places, even gone backward. The rural community confronts a puzzling problem which is still far from solution. ”

“ This is to say that one's education must (1) furnish him with the particular knowledge required for the life that he is to live, whether it be in the shop, on the farm, or in the profession. For knowledge lies at the basis of all efficiency and success in whatever occupation. Education must (2) shape the attitude, so that the individual will confront his part of the world's work or its play in the right spirit. It must not leave him a parasite, whether from wealth or from poverty, ready to prey upon others ”

“ The school should be put on a business basis. It should have the necessary tools with which to accomplish its work, and not be forced to waste the time and opportunity of childhood for want of a few dollars expended for equipment. Its patrons should realize that just as it pays to supply factory, shop, or farm with the best of instruments for carrying on the work, so it pays in the school. Cheap economy is always wasteful, and never more wasteful than when it cripples the efficiency of education. ”

“ He must be led to feel appreciation for the beautiful in art, literature, and music; and must have nurtured in his life a love for goodness and truth in every form. In short, through the curriculum the latent powers constituting the life capital of every normal child are to be stimulated and developed to the end that his life shall be more than mere physical existence—to the end that it shall be crowned with fullness of knowledge, richness of feeling, and the victory of worthy achievement. ”

“ If we succeed in working out the so-called rural problem of our country, in maintaining a high standard of agricultural population and rural life, the rural high school must be an important factor in our problem. For the children of our farms need and must have an education reaching beyond that of the elementary school. And this schooling must prepare them to find the most satisfactory and successful type of life on the farm, instead of drawing them away from the farm. ”

“ It is at this time that he lays the foundation for all later learning, that he forms his habits of study and his attitude toward education, and that his life is given the bent for all its later development. Nothing can be more irrational, therefore, than to put the most untrained and inexperienced teachers in charge of the younger children. The fallacious notion that "anyone can teach little children" has borne tragic fruit in the stagnation and mediocrity of many lives whose powers were capable of great achievements. ”

“ The grounds surrounding the rural school building can easily be ample in area, and beautiful in outlook and decoration. Here will be the neighborhood athletic grounds for both boys and girls, shade trees for picnics, flowers and shrubs, and ground enough for a school garden connected with the instruction in agriculture. Nor is it too much to believe that the district will in the future erect on the school grounds a cottage for the principal of the school and his family, and thus offer an additional inducement for strong, able men to devote their energies to education in the rural communities. ”

“ Our present-day civilization demands not only that the child shall be taught to read, but also that he shall be supplied with books and guided in his reading. Through reading as a tool he is to become familiar with the best in the world's literature and its history. He is not only to learn number, but is to be so educated that he may employ his number concepts in fruitful ways. ”

“ It is safe to say that a large proportion of the patrons of the rural schools of the present look upon arithmetic as the most important subject taught in the school after the simple mechanics of reading. Ability to "cipher" has been thought of as constituting a large and important part of the educational equipment of the practical man.
Without doubt, number is an essential part of the education of the child. Yet there is nothing in the mere art of numbering things as we meet them in daily experience that should make arithmetic require so large a proportion of time as it has been receiving. ”

“ And, naturally enough, the rural school has conceived its function in the same narrow light; for it is controlled very completely by its patrons, and a stream cannot rise higher than its source.
Because of its isolation, the pressing insistence of its toil, and the monotony of its environment, the rural community is in constant danger of intellectual and social stagnation. It has far more need that its school shall be a stimulating, organizing, socializing force than has the town or city. ”

“ But what has all this to do with the social organization of the rural school? Much. The country cannot have its theaters, parks, and crowded thoroughfares like the city. But it needs and must have some social center, where its people may assemble for recreation, entertainment, and intellectual growth and development. And what is more natural and feasible than that the public school should be this center? Here is an institution already belonging to the whole people, and set apart for the intellectual training of the young. ”

“ Not only is this loss of agricultural population serious to farming itself, creating a shortage of labor for the work of the farm, but it results in crowding other occupations already too full. There is no doubt that we have too many lawyers, doctors, merchants, clerks, and the like for the number of workers engaged in fundamental productive vocations. Smaller farms, cultivated intensively, would be a great economic advantage to the country, and would take care of a far larger proportion of our people than are now engaged in agriculture. ”

“ One whose grasp of a subject extends only to the simplest rudiments cannot teach these rudiments. He who has never himself explored a field can hardly guide others through that field; at least, progress through the field will be at the cost of great waste of time and failure to grasp the significance or beauty of what the field contains.
Expressed more concretely, it is impossible to transplant arithmetic, or geography, or history, or anything else that one would teach, immediately from the textbook into the mind of the child. ”

“ The trained teacher with modern notions of efficiency may attempt to enlarge the curriculum and to employ newer methods of teaching, but his talents are useless if he is hampered by a conservative, unappreciative, and indifferent community. When the school becomes a social center of the community's interest and life, there will be no difficulty in achieving any policy which the State permits or which a skilled teacher urges. ”

“ It is not meant, of course, that farmers should pay as high a school-tax rate for the elementary rural school as that paid by town patrons who also have a high school available. But, on the other hand, if better school facilities are to be furnished the country children, rural property should bear its full share of the taxes required. The farmer should be willing to pay as much for the education of his child as the city dweller pays for a similar education for his.
During the last generation farmers have been increasing in wealth faster than any other class of industrial workers. ”

“ Once again we must turn to the consolidated school as the solution of our difficulty. The isolated district school will not be able to demand and secure a worthy grade of preparation for teaching. The educational standards will not rise high enough under this system to create a public demand for skilled teachers. Nor can such salaries be paid as will encourage thorough and extensive study and preparation for teaching. And, finally, the professional incentives are not sufficiently strong in such schools to create a true craft spirit toward teaching. ”