Educational resources of village and rural communities

Front matter

J

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES OF

VILLAGE AND RURAL

Preface

There is nothing more characteristic of our present tendencies toward a more complete social democracy than the growing demand on the part of local communities, everywhere, and of every sort, for a more fundamental knowledge of themselves and their own native resources, physical and moral. This growing demand is natural and healthy. It marks the end of social superstition, and the real beginning of that social selfdependence and self-sufficiency which are promised in the completer developments of the scientific view of the world.

Communities everywhere are making "surveys" : we are taking account of what we have in the way of developed and undeveloped resources, both physical and moral, in order that we may know what we may count upon for community defense, community development, community pride, and that finer and wider community life which must come, if it comes at all, out of the still unknown resources of our communities.

This book is offered by men and women of experience as a tool for the better development of this essential social understanding in rural and village communities. It is not only a book to be read and studied, in the ordinary sense of that word : it is also and much more a tool of inquiry, by the use of which teachers, ministers,

VI PREFACE

and social leaders in all lines may be enabled to reach that more complete knowledge of their immediate communities without which social leadership becomes mere irresponsible authority.

Here set forth are the great main lines of community interest, activity, and resource. In most communities these activities "just go on," these resources lie latent, unrelated, undeveloped, and unknown. This book presents three aspects of each of these lines of interest. First, each subject is represented in a general way as an aspect of the life and resources of any community. This is intended to call the student's attention to the social wealth that may be found in any community in connection with our common interests and resources of life. Second, by means of insistent questions in connection with each subject, the student is directed to specific phases of that subject which should be looked for and very thoroughly studied in each local community. These questions are not exhaustive, but suggestive of the possible lines of investigation open to those who would know their own communities. Third, a brief bibliography of the subject is included, giving the serious student hints of materials by which his aroused interest may reach out into contact with knowledge and progress along the same lines in all parts of the world, until his community becomes the world.

It is hoped that this book will help the rural and village teacher, especially, to become more completely a part of the actual life and hope and purpose of the community. The natural social and moral resources of

PREFACE Vll

our country and village communities are enormous, but they are being pathetically wasted by reason of the lack of insight into the real processes of education on the part of so many of our teachers.

We are indebted to all the past and much of the present for the materials of this book. It is a contribution to that growing " social conversation " by which we are talking out, and, to some extent, thinking out, the social problems of our times. Whoever finds help in it is indebted to society to add still further to that same " social conversation." This is a time when the help of every one is needed : for the understanding of his own community and its social problems, and for the sympathetic instruction of his neighbors and neighboring community toward the same end. The world grows one as fast as knowledge comes to break down old superstitions and prejudices. Communities will be everlastingly variant because their resources are variant ; but communities will become more and more of one general soul as their self-knowledge becomes more complete.

JOSEPH K. HART.

The University of Washington, Seattle, February 16, 19 13.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Introduction — The Community as Educator . i By Joseph K. Hart, Assistant Professor of Education, University of Washington.

II. The Physical Resources of the Community . n By John Lee Coulter, Expert Special Agent for Agriculture, Bureau of the Census, Washington, D.C.

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The Community as Educator

"The (school) is too much with us : late and soon, (Cramming, forgetting) we lay waste our powers : Little we see in Nature that is ours ; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon ; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered new like sleeping flowers ; For this, for everything, we are out of tune ; It moves us not. — Great God ! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn : So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea ; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."

In the older days of the primitive community when life was centered in the immediate activities and interests of a comparatively small group, practically all the education of the younger generation went on unconsciously in the midst of, and by means of, the social life and industries of the community itself. Here was the physical world in which they made their home ; here the resources by which they sustained themselves; the industries that supported them, that bound them together, that determined the level of their living, and the bent of their thinking; the forms of government and social organization which unconsciously molded the young ; the religious life that helped to enforce the controls that society needed for its preservation; the traditions, the legends and the history that brought the past to the support of the authorities of the present; the amusements, the games and the general social life that marked the times of leisure from work and from war : all these elements and others were involved in the common life of the community group, and day by day, even moment by moment, they wrought their silent and effective spell over the development and destiny of the children and the whole community.

There was no school in the formal sense of the word ; and because there was none, all education was practical, thorough, and moral : practical because wrought out of the very life of the community; thorough because the tests were those of life itself, and none could call himself educated until the active world had passed upon his qualifications ; and moral because, both in purpose and in content, it was the community's own life and purpose wrought into the life and purpose of the maturing child ; such education was complete only when the child was thoroughly equipped with the desire and skill to continue the traditions and the interests of the community.

INTRODUCTION 3

We have lost so much of this : no, it is not lost, it is merely lost to sight. "The (school) is too much with us." The school was a social invention, growing up (as all inventions do) for the purpose of helping the community, as it became more complex, to do some things which it could no longer do in the old, unconscious ways. But, like any institution, the school quickly learned how to claim everything in its field, until to-day, the average person never thinks of Education as being anything beyond those things which the schools give, or convey, or bestow.

That is to say, we think very little to-day of the predominant part which the common life of the community played in the education of boys and girls in the primitive world ; we think very little of the fundamental part which the common forces and elements of the community still play, in spite of all our schools, in the actual education of our boys and girls. We are blind to the deepest facts of our educational situation. We give our schools credit for educational results in which the schools have had no part, and by so doing we are not only blind to the actual facts of education, but we stand in the way of that larger growth and development of the schools that is so necessary if our modern education is ever to find again that truly practical character, that social thoroughness and that real morality which were the striking characteristics of the education of the older, simpler world.

And the forces and elements for this community education are all with us. Not that alone ; for in spite of our ignoring and our ignorance of these facts, our boys and girls are being educated constantly by the communities in which they live. But, if we could get our eyes open, we could make these community elements and forces mean infinitely more than they now mean in the real education of our children. For example, in the wooded sections of the Mississippi Valley there is a wonderfully rich and varied bird life. But the average schoolboy learns to know half a dozen common birds by name : the rest are " sparrows," etc. ; yet here are hundreds of birds that come and go with the seasons ! And this is a simple illustration.

In this book the effort is being made to help the teachers in rural and village schools, and social leaders of all sorts in local communities, to become conscious of the great worlds of interest and possibility that in some degree even now are helping to mold the lives and purposes of the children; but which, rightly understood and appreciated, can be molded in turn until their molding of the childlife shall be to the ends of practical understanding, through development, and complete moralization of the growing child.

What are these community elements and interests? The physical resources of the community condition all the life and action of the child as well as of the community. The older human beings of the community inevitably determine the social world within which the child

INTRODUCTION 5

shall grow up to social maturity and responsibility. The economic relationships and industrial life of the community will largely determine the way he will think and talk, the range of his opportunities and the bent of his common interests. The health of the community, its intelligent care for health, its interests, or lack of interest, in hygiene and sanitation will determine largely the efficiency and energy of the growing child. He will feed upon the traditions, the folk tales, the heroic stories, the desires, the prejudices, the hatreds, the feuds, and the inherent friendships of the community: its people shall be his people, and its gods his gods. The community government will tend to control and manipulate his chances of life; it will make a fine and noble life possible, or it will tend to produce conditions that will kill off all the chances of complete living. The out-ofdoors will nurture him and feed his imagination, or it will remain a sordid and low thing, to be manipulated for the sake of profit. The very home itself will reflect the inner life of the individual, just as he reflects the inner life of the community : the home will be a place of beauty and life and culture, or it will be in some other degree removed from the level of the den of the wild beast. The general social life of the community will inspire him and draw him out and fill him with social aspirations and the finer social sympathies, or it will tend in some degree to destroy all these in him. With wholesome recreation and play and with social amusements he will recover his strength spent in the work of the day and the week, or through all his childhood by playful exercise prepare himself for the serious doings of his maturer years. By the social idealism of the religious life of the community he will be able to link his life with the ideal purposes of the race ; or if these be wanting he will find a life on the more mean levels of existence. And in the provisions which the community shall have made or shall make by which the streams of knowledge from all the golden hills of the past and present shall flow into the community will his intellectual life be enriched or destroyed.

And blessed is that community in which there are leaders who are wise enough to have realized that their own community is, historically, a part of the story of man in all the ages, and geographically a part of the home of man ; and that in its life and interests and activities may be found something akin to everything the race has wrought at any time, in any place ; that therefore its own activities and industries, and interests, and social necessities may quite as well be the central facts and factors in the schooling of its children as the activities and industries and interests of a world far removed in time and space. All about the children, and the adults, too, surge and flow these forces and elements of the community life. Into the midst of them the children are born and grow to their maturity. How little the schools seem when we set them over against this surging, insistent life of the community !

And yet, how much the schools might become if we could but see them in terms of their original significance,

INTRODUCTION 7

and in their proper relationship to the life of the community. Once there were no schools, because they were not needed : the common life of the market place, and the religious ceremonial filled the child's days with active employment, his mind with social intelligence and purpose, and his heart with reverence and sympathetic fear. But as people came closer together, and life became more complex and involved, the education of the child became more technical and complicated; a profession of teachers arose, and the school became an educational instrument of the community. But the old elements and forces were still existent. The school did not, — it could not, — do away with them. It was developed to supplement in definite ways forces already in existence. It was not to supplant those forces, nor ignore them. And, because it was the last of the social institutions, developed to meet a social need, it would have been the part of wisdom for the school to be modest, and to learn to adapt itself to the changing conditions in the life of the community, striving ever to do those things which were not being done by some other element of the community's life.

All about us are the contributions which are being made to education by those more primitive elements of the community which are far more fundamental to its welfare than is the school. These contributions are largely unintentional, incidental, accidental, — all the more effective just because of these facts. What is the school to do? Shall it, also, insist upon its purely institutional, i.e., its traditional, status, and upon being just as unintentional, incidental, and accidental as the other elements of our social life? That ill becomes its protestations of intellectual leadership. Should not tht, school and the teacher look deeply into the life of the community, surveying with thoughtful care all the resources, activities, interests, and elements that, within the community and its organic relationships, are making educational impression upon the growing children ? Should they not determine wherein the common life and activity of the community are already sufficiently educative, and should they not be wise enough to let such phases of life alone, giving to the immediate life of the people such share in the education of the children as that immediate life can do best? And should they not find wherein the educative direction of the children is being imperfectly, or badly, done, and should they not, at those places, bravely set to work, so supplementing, where help is needed, the power of the community that created the school ?

There follow hereupon thirteen chapters dealing with these primitive elements in the education of the child and the community. Then follow two chapters dealing with the sort of school that is needed to-day, to meet the changed needs of our times. We have been educating our children away from their homes, their communities, and from work, toward false ideals of culture, cosmopolitanism, and leisure. The only true culture is the culture that comes through work and the

INTRODUCTION 9

love of work. The only true cosmopolitanism is that which grows out of, and is rooted deep within, some present community : the " man without a country " is the very antithesis of a true cosmopolitan. And the only leisure that is not vulgar is the leisure that is worthily won, and that is socially above criticism.

The Community is the true educational institution. Within the community there is work that educates and provides for life ; within the community are the roots of the cosmopolitanism that marks the truly educated man ; within the community there is room for a noble and dignified culture and leisure for all. Let us become aware of our community resources, physical, social, moral. Let us recognize the part they play and will always play in the actual education of our boys and girls. Let us consciously extend their powers within legitimate bounds until our modern education within the community shall be, as completely as possible, natural, immediate, and free. Let us organize our socially supplementary institution, — the school, — until it shall adequately reenforce the work of education where it is weak and supply it where it is wanting. So, and only so, will the child become really educated, the community find education genuine, practical, thorough, and vitally moral, and the school become in our times what it was originally intended to be, — the social instrument for doing those things of an educational nature which are not already being done more effectively by the primitive and unconscious influences of the community's common life.

J. K. H.

IO EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

Elam. Outlines of Rural Community Life.

Henderson. Catechism for Social Observation.

Henderson. Social Duties.

Bailey, L. H. Survey Idea in Country Life Work. (Pamphlet, 19 pp. Address the author at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.)

Bailey, L. H. Cyclopedia of American Agriculture. 4 v.

Crouch, Rev. F. N. A Social Service Program for the Parish. (Pamphlet of the Joint Commission on Social Service of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 24 pp. May be had upon request of the author, 157 Montague St., Brooklyn, N.Y.)

Department of Church and Country Life. A Rural Survey in Missouri. (1910, 42 pp. Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City.)

Department of Church and Country Life. A Rural Survey in Pennsylvania. 1910, 40 pp. Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, 1 56 Fifth Avenue, New York City.)

Dunn. Community and the Citizen.

Earp, Edwin L., Ph.D. The Social Engineer. (Eaton & Hains, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York City, 1911, 326 pp. $1.25. A book of special practical value to country ministers.)

Galpin, C. J. A Method of Making a Social Survey of a Rural Community. (Circular of Information No. 29, January, 191 2, 11 pp. The University of Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station, Madison, Wis.)

Gillette, John H. The Drift to the City in Relation to the Rural Problem. {American Journal of Sociology, March, 191 1. v. 16, pp. 645-67. No. 5. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 111. 50 cents.)

Butterfield. Chapters in Rural Progress. (Chicago, 1908.)

Anderson, Wdlbert L. The Country Town.

Plunket, Sir Horace L. The Problem of Rural Life in America. (New York, 191 1.)

CHAPTER II PHYSICAL RESOURCES OF THE COMMUNITY Characteristics of Physical Resources

Introductory. — No comprehensive study of rural conditions or rural problems can be made without knowing first of all something of the physical resources which are the foundation for the agricultural activities. The same statement may be made with equal force concerning an industrial community. I use the term " physical resources " in its broadest sense. We may well start any investigation bearing in mind that we have two primary factors to deal with. These are the human resources of the community and the physical resources. After we have clearly in mind the characteristics and quantity of the physical resources and the characteristics and number of the human resources, we are ready to begin an interpretation of the struggle of the human factor to make a living. It surely must be acknowledged by all that man's time is largely devoted to the struggle of making a living, and since this struggle is largely an effort on his part to control and utilize nature to the greatest advantage, it seems necessary first to investigate these two original factors. It is true that many men do not come into contact with the physical resources in their struggle for a living. There are those who prey upon their fellow men, and there are those who serve those who are struggling with the physical resources, but the general statement is none the less true that the great masses of humanity are engaged during the major part of their time working with nature and her products.

By some good fortune, it has been arranged by an unseen power that man does not need to struggle during all of his waking hours in order to make a living. Some of his time is spent communing with his fellow men. Man is a gregarious animal. On account of having the power of speech and other such powers, he delights in taking advantage of their presence and desires whenever possible to get in touch with his fellow men. Hence, we have social activities. Some of his time is spent in religion. The general custom throughout the country is for at least one day a week to be set aside for religious activities and rest. The time taken for social activities is irregularly distributed over the year. There are scattered days throughout the year when people leave their labors and engage in social intercourse. Evenings very generally are devoted more or less to the same purpose. Certain seasons of the year when economic activities call for less than normal amounts of time are devoted more or less to social life. Political activities demand consideration. But during an average year probably not more than a very few hours are given to politics. The average man reads some, meets with other men from time to time for discussion, and probably one or two days during the year goes to cast his ballot. None the less, political activities demand some time ; and, more and more as people find the struggle for a living more intricate, the political problem calls for special consideration. Then there are recreation and other activities of a similar nature. I merely mention these to emphasize to the reader that starting as we do with the physical and human resources, these must be studied in such a way as to make possible a better understanding of the activities of the human factor.

Topography. — In this study I shall limit myself to an analysis of conditions in so far as they affect rural communities. The problems of all industrial centers can be studied in somewhat the same way, but different influences have to be considered. Probably no influence is more important upon the lives of people than the topography of the community under consideration. The status of the farmers at any particular time and the agricultural activities are entirely different in the rough and rugged country from those in the level or slightly undulating country. Consider for instance the problems confronting a community of one thousand people settled in narrow valleys with precipitous mountain walls on either side. They are shut in from the outside world. It is difficult to get into communication with outside activities. For this reason the customs of the people at the time of entering the valley are apt to linger long. New ideas are slowly accepted. The educational, religious and social activities of the people are greatly influenced. Compare for a moment such a community with a community of one thousand people in a level prairie section. Try to determine to what extent the differences are due to the differences in topography. Compare as an illustration the recreations of the people. If both communities are in the northern climate, the sports of the mountain community will be skating on the little river during the winter, sliding down hills, skeeing, etc., and in the summer it will be climbing over hills through the timbered valleys, hunting in the mountain forests, and fishing in the mountain streams. In the prairie community there may be heard jingling bells in the winter time, and cutter and sleigh rides will be the favorite pastime. Snowshoes may be found. Skating would be possible on artificially constructed lakes. Perchance snow boats would be found, and it might be, if the community were in the neighborhood of a lake, ice boats and skeeing would be a favorite pastime. In the summer, baseball and other similar games would prevail.

But agricultural activites are more influenced probably than are the social, religious, educational, or recreative activities. In the prairie country, large machines drawn by many horses pass over the level land ; great fields of grain will flourish. In the mountain valleys, on the other hand, a few rows of corn, small patches of cereals, small machines, each man with one work animal, or probably doing the work by hand, will be found. This is the difference in methods of conducting agriculture forced upon people by differences in topography. Those who are more prosperous because they have found a better community should not be given too much credit, while those who are not prosperous because they are combating with a harsh environment should not be too severely condemned because of their lack of prosperity. In the mountain valley, the people may be kept busy during many weeks of each year repairing damages done because of the topography. The water rushing down the hillside may wash away their homes, or maybe destroy their fields; an overflowing river may do great damage. If the farmer attempts to market the product of his farm he may have to spend much time in the construction of roads over the hills and after having constructed the roads, he may find it necessary to haul very small quantities of the product because of the steep hills that must be passed over. But there are disadvantages to the community on the prairie which sometimes are as serious as the disadvantages found in mountain valleys.

In beginning a study of a rural community, it would be well to make a careful survey of the topography as a starting point in order that the influences may be observed throughout the investigation. Much data may be secured from the Geological Survey, at Washington, D.C., which would be helpful to any student. Some state departments also furnish data and many physical geographies furnish a basis for such study.

Soils. — Topography is only one of the many factors to be considered. Turn your attention for a moment to two communities of farmers living in a prairie country with topography and all other factors the same, except that one community is in a district of very rich soils, whereas the other lives upon very poor soil. It is true that the religious, educational, and social activities may be the same except in so far as these are influenced by the prosperity of the farmers, but the agricultural activities will vary widely. In order, therefore, to interpret the status of either community we must investigate very early the general character of the soils, whether they are rich loams, alkali, sandy soils, clay soils, or what not. I have in mind as I write two groups of farmers, both from the same country originally. One group came ahead of the other by twenty years and found large tracts of very rich soils, free, surveyed, and ready to be occupied. The other group came after all of this area had been taken, and they were practically forced to settle upon much less desirable soils of the same general topography, climate, and rainfall. It is scarcely necessary to state that the second group, although coming to this country at a much more opportune time, has not prospered nearly to the same extent as has the former group. The soils are not adapted to the best paying crops. They are sandy and it is very difficult to construct good roads. Much more labor is necessary in the field in order to produce a reasonable crop. The farmers must spend much time carrying fertilizers to the fields in order to make a reasonable crop. In this second community, because of a less bountiful nature, the farmers must spend much more time than otherwise struggling for a living. There is less time to build roads, to improve their homes, and to build schools and churches. There is also less money to buy materials and the farmers in this second community are less happy and much less prosperous than those in the first. I am unable to attribute this to anything less than fortuitous circumstances. The first group of farmers came at an opportune time. They found nature bountiful, — physical resources were all that could be asked. The topography was right from every viewpoint and the soils were rich. It was not because the farmer waved the magic wand that the crops were bountiful. It was not because the farmers were more foresighted that they are now more prosperous. They took advantage of what they found, but the second group of farmers did likewise with less result.