The twentieth-century rural school

Preface

This little volume has been prepared for county school superintendents, members of county boards of education, progressive rural and village teachers, the rural-school sections of teachers' institutes, and for classes in rural education in the state normal schools. Its theme is the relation the rural school should bear to the life and interests of the community.

I am convinced that the free school of the future must hinge more on the community-service idea. The successful teacher in the centralized rural high school of the twentieth century must possess the combined abilities of "community manager," "social engineer" and educator. He must be the social and industrial light as well as the intellectual light of the people he serves.

Many teachers have left the profession in despair. But I am not ready to give up. I am firm in the behef that a new era is about to dawn. There is still a chance for men and women of ability and training who know how to make their ways among people

PREFACE — Continued successfully while engaged in the teaching profession. One of the richest opportunities for service and for attractive pay lies in our best rural and village communities. It is an opportunity overlooked by most of our educators. But few of our normal schools have ever seen it clearly. In the discussions that follow, I have tried to point the way to it.

I have endeavored to make this treatise as elementary and concrete as possible, taking most of the illustrations from rural and village schools I have taught and from things I have observed among schools taught by others. I have tried to prepare it from the view-point of the country teacher facing actual conditions at close range and not from the view-point of the college man interpreting rural data at long distance. I sincerely hope it will meet the need for which it is intended. E. E. D.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I Some Things of Concern to the Observant Teacher on First Arriving in the Community 1 The Young Man Who Never Saw the Community Where He Was to Teach till the Morning School Began — Choosing a Boarding Place — Getting Acquainted with the People — Identifying Gossips and Trouble-Makers — The Religious Situation — Recreation in the Community — Taking Inventory of the Community's Finances — Taking Inventory of the People.

II Diagnosing the Case and Applying the Remedy 23 Most Teachers Are Poor Diagnosticians — How a Four-Teacher School Got a Library of Six Hundred Volumes — How Five Small School Districts Were Consolidated into One Large District — Great Leadership in a One-Teacher School — The Supreme Test of a Community Leader.

CHAPTER I Some Things of Concern to the Observatstt

Teacher on First Arriving in the

Community

I. The Young Man Who Never Saw the Community Where He Was to Teach till the Morning School Began. — Thirty noisy children were on the playground when the teacher came. Half as many were romping in the schoolhouse. The teacher, now of the faculty of a prominent university in the South, was young and unaccustomed to responsibility. He knew little about the affairs of life. He knew less about child psychology and school management. His untrained eyes could not see community needs with penetration and understanding. His equipment for the profession he was entering consisted of a brass hand bell, a box of crayon, and a license to practise teaching on a certificate of inferior grade.

At nine o'clock he rang his bell. It was the first time in his life he had ever rung a bell clothed with

I all the authority of a pedagogue. He rang it most vigorously. The children came scrambling into the house. After they had had a few spirited scuffles for desirable seats, quiet ensued. Then all were curious to know what the teacher would do next. Just what that would be he himself was far from sure. His face was feverish with embarrassment and his nerves were quavering with uncertainty. Not knowing what else to do, he called a class. Two minutes later he dismissed it and called another. After a like period of time the second class was excused and a third one called. By recess he had heard all the classes in his school five times apiece. Then, for the first time, it came to his disturbed mind that a well-planned daily program would be necessary for the successful conduct of the school. And while the children played at recess, he arranged a schedule of classes for the remainder of the day. Thus he came face to face with his first difficulty in a path made rugged by his meager preparation and shortness of practical foresight.

Those were great days for that young teacher, but hard ones on the pupils. He was getting experience. They were being practised on. Both school and community were the victims of his incompetency that entire half-year. He could not anticipate and fortify against the most obvious emergencies sure to arise in the course of his new duties. For instance, he engaged board in the home of a very unpopular man dishked by most of his neighbors. He permitted himself to be swayed by gossip and old prejudices brought over from family feuds of former years. He made every man and woman in the community his confidant. He was indiscreet in what he said and did. He inaugurated plays and games at school not at all in accord with the tastes and accepted proprieties of, most of the people he had come to serve. He took issue with all who did not believe as he did, often antagonizing them to the point of enmity. He was a poor judge of children and grown people alike. He was a still poorer judge of community interests and needs, and was pitiably helpless in his impractical attempts to meet them.

This young man, uninformed and inexperienced, failed in most that he undertook that year. But his abominable failures were no more distressing than many made to-day by teachers of far greater academic culture than he. True, the academic attainments of teachers in the South are deplorably lacking in quality and degree. But more deplorable still is the fact that these meager academic standards are about the only standards required. Personality, representative ability, aptitude for handling people, the gifts of civic and social adroitness, and ability to live, think and teach in terms of country life have been given but little v^eight in the certification of teachers. For that reason, I have deemed it expedient to set forth the examples of successes, failures, clever devices, unusual foresight and advanced educational practises enumerated in this little volume.

2. Choosing a Boarding Place. — A young lady once wrote her county superintendent thus: "As you know, I shall be principal of the school at Viola this year. Where is the best place for me to live? First, I would like to stay with the most influential family in school affairs. Second, I desire a comfortable room with good table board, and other things considered, I would like to be as near the schoolhouse as possible."

Whether a home with the most influential family in the community should be placed before a comfortable room and good table board near the school, is an open question. But this much is sure. Many teachers have come to failure by locating themselves with the wrong families, and many others have failed because of uncomfortable rooms and poor food, while some have wrecked their health from exposure on long muddy roads to and from school.

Much depends on getting in the right family. Some families are of doubtful morals; some are gossip-mongers and mischief-makers; some are steeped in religious fanaticism; some are anarchistic; some are contemptuously snobbish; some have histories beclouded with whispered rumors of past misdeeds; some are misfits in the community; some are inexplainably unpopular. Unfortunate is the teacher who engages board in any of these homes. She makes herself a target for gossip, and throws wide a chasm of chilly aversion between herself and patrons from the very beginning. It is far better that she investigate her community carefully and critically before procuring a place to stay. If possible, she should do this before school opens. Where it is not possible to go in person, inquiries should be made through the county superintendent and other reliable people.

As a rule, it is unwise for a teacher to board with a trustee if as good accommodations can be had a^^some other place. For instance, a trustee in a small village boarded the seven teachers of the public school faculty. The teachers were charged with pooling their influence^ with this trustee to dominate the poHcies of the school. The friction resulted in a complete change of teachers and trustees for the next year. Again, three teachers engaged board with a trustee. They found his home an undesirable place to stay and moved within the course of a few weeks. This incurred the ill will of him and his family. He retaliated by casting the deciding vote in the school-board meeting dismissing the janitor and requiring the teachers to do the sweeping.

3. Getting Acquainted with the People. — The spirit of friendliness and service is fundamentally essential to the teacher's success. No matter how sweet-spirited and philanthropic the teacher may be, she can not succeed and live apart from the world. Altruism requires action, and friendliness can not thrive without exercise. It takes motion to make them useful. Intimate acquaintance and abounding sympathy with those with whom the teacher is to live and labor are indispensable to her success. Teaching school is no business for a recluse.

Academic attainments unaccompanied by social adaptability are almost sure to make a poor teacher. Failure is imminent for the teacher who does not know and understand her constituents. Intimate personal acquaintance should extend to all the children of school age and to the parents and young people not in school. This relationship should be established early in the school year. When possible, it should be done before the beginning of school.

The teacher with foresight and practical capacity seizes upon every opportunity for meeting and knowing her patrons. Post-office, drug-store, church, bazaar, farmer's club, school festival, and every other place where people come together find her there with that warmth of fellowship and kindliness of spirit that compel respect and admiration from all. Furthermore, if her heart is of the right sort, she actually enjoys meeting, knowing and understanding people from all walks and stations of life. She knows and understands the crude and the cultured, the blaze and the plain, the democrat and the snob, the poor and the rich, the poorly-clothed and the well-dressed, the modest and the bold, the underfed and the well-rationed, and all the rest that go to make up the great common tribe she has elected to serve.

But not all teachers meet people with the same degree of ease. Some have affable dispositions and magnetic personalities. They enjoy social contact. Their very attitude toward life compels friendliness. All who know them like them. Others are timid, shy, taciturn, and unacquainted with the ways of the world. They have neither the gift nor the acquired art of moving among people with ease and assurance. And still another group is unmindful of the value of warm social relationships and quite indifferent to the normal feelings and reactions of the many human souls about them.

But whether the teacher be timid, naturally stupid, or socially alert, the need for knowing patrons and being known by them remains the same. On that account some enterprising communities have established a very commendable custom of giving a neighborhood party in honor of the teachers just before the beginning of school each year. These parties are usually held at the schoolhouse, though sometimes they are held at the home of a trustee or at the home of some other family of good influence in the community. Where such social gatherings are not provided for by established practise the teacher should improvise some means of getting the people together just for acquaintance's sake. A Saturday picnic or a

Clean-Up-and-Beautification Day may be very appropriately employed for getting teachers and patrons to meet one another in the spirit of friendliness and cooperation.

4. Identifying Gossips and Trouble-Makers. — Your school district may not have a community gossip. But it most likely does. Most communities have such human nuisances. Some of them are harmless though ridiculously amusing. Others are provocative of mischief and trouble. And the narrower the community's interests, the wider and deeper is the stream of gossip that flows through it.

It is well enough for the teacher to know which persons are afflicted most seriously with the gossiper's habit. Such information may have the value of an insurance policy on the teacher's official life, for nothing can weaken one's influence more surely or end one's official life more abruptly and ignominiously than a fetid rumor in the halfconfidential mouth of an inveterate tale-bearer. The prudent teacher will know the busybodies, have them under constant surveillance, retain their good will, and keep her own conduct most discreetly fortified against their idle tongues and damaging curiosity. This is the surest way of living among them agreeably and getting along with them successfully.

Some women gossips are exceedingly dangerous and equally as difficult to deal with. There is no hate so deep or revenge so unmitigating as that of an ill-tempered woman. Among the qualifications of the persons who get along with her best are patient forbearance, friendliness for all, and apparent unconcern for household foibles, community feuds, and the telltale prattle of talkative people. But men gossips are much easier to handle. In fact, the management of a trouble-making man gossip is not difficult at all, if he is dealt with in private by one who knows how to be frank and keep cool.

For instance, a community had been in an unsettled condition for more than two years. Two teachers had abandoned the school in disgust. A young man of good personality, easy manners and calm nerves took charge at the beginning of the third year. He soon located the chief mischiefmaker. It was no other than a man of considerable influence — a deacon in the church and a former member of the school board. He was on hand and made a short talk the morning school opened. He visited the school three times that week, two times the next, and twice more the week following. On all these visits his one subject and theme of conversation was the community's past trouble. He was proud of his expert information in this field. He could recite family histories by the hour.

But on Friday afternoon of the third week of school, in the sunshine on the west side of the schoolhouse, while the children were on the playground at recess, the teacher reluctantly intimated that the unpleasantness of the two previous years was of little concern to him. Then his informant said : "Yes, but there are some of these people you will have to watch. They will bear watching. I have known them all these years."

"For sure," said the young man. "I am watching. It is my duty to watch. I would be an unworthy public servant if I did not watch. I am watching every pupil and every patron I have just as closely as I can. But do you know, Mr. Densmore, / am watching you closer than all the rest of this community put together. Now, you are a good man and I like you. I think you like me. And we are going to continue to like each other. It's our best friends who tell us of our worst faults. And I tell you kindly. You talk too much. I did not come here to contract for past grievances. I came here to teach the school this year. And if you will just cease agitating old troubles, I think I can manage things here on the hill."

That school was taught to the last day and closed in peace. That was more than a dozen years ago. These two persons are still good friends and have been all the time. This incident that passed off tranquilly in private would have precipitated a bout or a brawl, making food for still more gossip, had it occurred in public. The public never did learn about it. The teacher did not tell it. Mr. Densmore could not afford to tell it.

On coming into a strange community, teachers are sometimes unconsciously swayed and biased by reports of the incorrigibility of certain pupils, the uncanny manners of this family, the extreme unpopularity of that one, and the like. For instance, a girl of fine ability and strong determination had helped her mother chastise her drunken father, had thrashed an impudent tramp with a garden rake, and had told a blushing young teacher that he should be dismissed for incompetency. She was the talk of the village. The teachers for the ensuing year heard of her and feared her long before they ever saw her. She was summarily expelled from school by the erratic young principal on an unwarranted pretext at the end of the first week. She entered school elsewhere. Five years later she graduated from the college in a class with this very young principal who had inflicted upon her the injustice and disgrace of expulsion from the public school.

An unverified report can easily be parent to a false impression. Teachers are often swayed by groundless rumors. In this way wrong opinions concerning certain pupils, families and individuals quite commonly lead to subsequent injustices. Therein consists the greatest danger of rumor.

5. The Religious Situation. — Religious jealousy has not yet been refined out of the hearts of men. Interdenominational animosities still bring disgrace upon the sublime concept of the Christian brotherhood of mankind. Envious and suspicious intolerance still exists among Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Lutherans and Campbellites in some benighted localities. The old-time proselyting and religious debating in public, once so productive of bitter dissension, have just about passed away. But recruiting agents are still active for every congregation, and the new school-teacher seldom escapes their inquiries and solicitations. Indeed, some preachers look upon the public school as a fertile source for choir and Sunday-school talent and seek to influence the election of teachers with that end in view. For instance, last year I saw a man elected to the superintendency of the public schools in a town of five thousand population simply because his wife could sing in a certain church choir and the wives of the other seven applicants were not thus qualified. The pastor of that particular church controlled two votes on the school board. Just five months ago a new board declined to reelect that superintendent for the present year.

Church ambitions and religious dissensions often creep into the schools of our villages and small towns. They occur less commonly in the country, though the country is by no means free from them. Yet where they do make their appearance in the country, they are usually in their most violent form. The bitterest religious enmity I have ever witnessed has been in backward rural centers. Yet, all this does not mean that desertion of the church is essential to a teacher's success. Far from it, even in the most intolerant community. But it does mean with double emphasis that the successful teacher in a community rent with religious dissension must be tolerant, eternally vigilant, and have the bigness of character and those qualities of resourcefulness and adroitness that enable one to stand out above petty squeamishness, avoid scriptural arguments, and keep aloof from church differences without giving offense to any one.

6. Recreation in the Community. — Recreation in many country districts is in a state of chaos. Social desires are ignored and unprovided for. The social instincts run riot like weeds in an untenanted meadow. In six contiguous communities in a prosperous farming district these were some of the answers as to how the people spent their Sundays: "Roaming over the country," "Visiting and loafing," "Wandering aimlessly about," "Sleeping and resting," "Dancing at the German Hall," "At church and Sunday-school."

Wholesome, well-unified recreational activities lessen the difficulties of school discipline. The attitude of the pupils in the school-room reflects to a very considerable degree what takes place during their hours of leisure after school and on holidays. The adept disciplinarian will be vigilantly cognizant of the values or the disadvantages of every social resort her pupils frequent and every recreational function they attend. Every community, no matter how dejected, has its social centers — ^pool hall, dance pavilion, barber-shop, country store, post-office, cotton-gin, garage, drug-store, or street corner — where certain gangs and groups of its population congregate for gregarious pastime. And these resorts will not escape the eye of the teacher with keen vision for observing human conduct. They will be noted and correctly evaluated in the early weeks of school. If the teacher be a practical social-welfare worker — and every rural teacher and rural preacher should be — she will be deeply concerned with remedial measures for their improvement and correction.

A few years ago I was highly gratified with some observations in a village of six hundred people. The local pastor was a retired teacher, a man of good ability, and a natural leader of people. When he took the pastorate in this village, there were some boys' congregating centers that were breeders of idleness and baseness. He wished to combat them. He fortified the battlements of his church for that purpose, and a crusade of competition and peaceful conquest was begun against these recreational strongholds. One by one they fell. They could not withstand the wholesome competition of the new club rooms for boys and girls on the church property. And the membership of that church steadily increased from a few score to nearly five hundred.

Play and social inclinations are as natural as life itself. For the church to forbid its young people to engage in certain amusements without providing other and better recreations to take their places is a rebuke to the sanity of its membership and a selfinflicted blow at its own ultimate existence. Yet there are those in the ecclesiastical camps who would limit the functions of the church to things purely spiritual, just as there are those in the pedagogical ranks who would limit the entire work of the school to things intellectual and cultural. The cheap commercialized show, the vaudeville, and the questionable amusement park continue to flourish because the churches and the schools do not compete with them with cleaner and more profitable pastime. The amusement-seeking public accepts them because it has no other alternative, just as a man lost in the woods will alleviate his thirst with stagnant water rather than perish. Social hunger is almost as impelling as the craving for food.

7. Taking Inventory of the Community's Finances. — Before contracting for your school did you ask your trustees these questions : What is the local school tax rate ? What is the total amount of taxable wealth in the district? How much available school revenue does it produce?

Finances constitute the bone, and desire for enlightenment makes up the muscle and nerve, of the school system. Without proper financial support the school must be left prone and helpless. The wide-awake teacher will look over a prospective location with the eyes of a business man. He will make an approximate inventory of the community's tangible assets — railroads, pipe-lines, sawmills, brickyards, farms, dairies, etc. — and learn if the school taxes are regularly paid on all of them. He will know if the annual income measures up to the budget of a school such as he would care to teach. And he will not be blind to such artificially imposed conditions as farm tenancy and absentee landlordism, so menacing to school finances in many of the wealthiest agricultural counties in the South.

I know a few teachers who are fifty years ahead of the times. They have seen the light of a new day. Some of them mean to make rural education their life-work. They will succeed in that capacity. But success will come easiest and surest to those who use the best judgment in choosing places to work. The most attractive of all communities is that one with a homogeneous, home-owning population, financially able and morally willing to support its free schools. These are the places that attract and hold the best teachers.

8. Taking Inventory of the People. — I know a community where the white population is composed of about equal numbers of Mexicans, Bohemians, Swedes, Germans and Americans. The human element in this community is all out of harmony with itself. The people are separated into small clannish groups by the barriers that the differences in race, language, custom and traditions have set up. Their ideals and interests in life constitute an ill-shaped, heterogeneous mass quite devoid of coherence and unity. It is poor soil for the seeds of public enterprise. School spirit seldom thrives in it. The biggest problem in a community of that sort is that of amalgamation and Americanization. The hope for its solution rests with the younger generation. Young men should be encouraged to accept places on the school board and take the lead in public affairs.

In taking inventory of the human assets in any school district the appraiser should be keenly watchful for evidences of special talent and the gift of natural leadership. He should identify a corps of potential lieutenants for assisting in the conduct of school and community activities. And, having successfully identified them, no time should be lost in pressing them into service according to their respective capacities: Boy Scout Master, baseball captain and athletic coach, literary society president, secretary of the reading circle, dramatic club leader, music director, and the like.

The teacher has taken a long step toward success when he learns how to delegate responsibility successfully. There are plenty of capable laymen who are quite willing to help the teacher carry his burden of responsibility when properly encouraged to do so. The pastor of the village church, mentioned in a previous paragraph, is the school's most valuable human adjunct. There are those in other walks of life who are just as able as he, but their talents are lying dormant because no one has sought to stimulate them into activity.

In a certain rural district I know an unassuming nurseryman and gardener of no mean ability. He is one of the best informed practical horticulturists of my entire acquaintance. But the school did not discover him until recently. Now he meets the class in elementary agriculture once a week and contributes his time and talent most willingly. There are doctors, dairymen, poultry raisers and swine breeders all over the country who would cooperate with the school just as closely as this man does if the teachers would only find them and enlist their assistance in the rigfht way.

1. Is it as essential that the teacher be in the community for a week before school begins as it is that she be on the school grounds for one-half hour before school opens each morning ?

2. Give reasons why it is sometimes not best for a teacher to board in the home of a trustee.

3. Can a person without the gift of friendliness and social magnetism succeed as a country school-teacher? Can the qualities of friendliness and sociability be cultivated and acquired by one not possessing them as native gifts? Why should the teacher's acquaintance extend to all the people in the community? Why should the teacher know and understand people from the humblest to the most exalted stations of life? Some people with magnanimous hearts and deep sympathies have true affections for the whole of mankind. Others are apparently friendly and sympathetic, but at heart are altogether insincere. To which class do you belong? Are you really democratic, or do you merely pose as a democrat? Name some values that studying people at first hand and living sympathetically among them have over reading books about them.

4. Why is a community with narrow interests so likely to be contaminated with poisonous gossip ? Why is gossip more intense in small towns than in large cities ? It has been said that persons of education and culture are less given to gossip than the poorly informed, because small and worthless thoughts arc crowded out of their minds with larger useful ones. To which of these clae«©s do yoti b©biig?

5. Were you elected to your present position because you are a Baptist or a Methodist, or because you are a capable teacher? Is there social and religious harmony in your community?

6. Is there any form of organized social recreation for the young people where you are to teach this year ? Where is the community's social center ? Do the boys meet at barber-shops, pool halls, or other places for conversational intercourse and passive amusement? Do the young people go away to town for their amusement? If so, why?

7. Of what does the taxable property consist in the district where you are to teach this year: farms, live stock, railroads, pipe-lines, etc.? What is the total property value of the district? What per cent, of the people own their homes ? What per cent, are tenants '^. Are there any absentee landlords? Are they active friends of public education?

8. What is the predominant nationality of the people in your school district? Do they all speak the English language? Are they socially homogeneous? Is there any one local interest — club, church or business organization^ — in which the majority of them take an active part?