ily upon

woman.

ing progressive ideas, methods, and facilities into the everyday work and recreation of the home environment.”

The farm woman feels her isolation from neighbors as well as Isolation from libraries and other means of keeping in touch with outside life. bears heavShe counts her favorite farm paper or woman's magazine among her the farm valued aids. She believes that farm women should come together more often in organized groups to learn from each other and to gain a mastery of their problems through united effort. “The farmer," she declares, “deals much with other men. The children form associates at school, but we, because of our narrow range of duties and distance from neighbors, form the habit of staying at home and, to a greater degree than is commonly supposed, feel the need for congenial companionship.”... The five outstanding problems (indicated in the study conducted The out

standing by the Department of Agriculture] are:

problems of (1) Shortening the working day of the average farm woman. the farm (2) Lessening the amount of heavy manual labor she now performs.

(3) Bringing about higher standards of comfort and beauty for the farm home.

(4) Safeguarding the health of the farm family, and especially the health of the mother and growing child.

(5) Developing and introducing money-yielding home industries where necessary in order to make needed home improvements.

woman.

149. The consolidated rural school 1

Of great importance in the educational and social life of country Nature and

purpose of people is the movement toward the consolidation of rural schools.

the move“Consolidation of schools” is the term applied when two or more ment to

consolidate school distri are made into a single district, one school in one build

rural ing replacing two or more small schools in several buildings. The schools. two primary motives in the movement are, first the desire to secure better educational facilities, and second the desire to decrease the cost of education in the school district. Some of the advantages of the consolidation of rural schools are described in the following ex

Consolidation facilitates the supervision of schools.

The classification of pupils allowed by consolidation is beneficial.

tract from a bulletin of the Bureau of Education in the United States Department of the Interior:

One of the great educational advantages of the consolidated school comes through the possibilities of increased supervision without additional expenses. . . . Outside of New England and New York the rural supervising officer is the county superintendent, and in only a comparatively few counties are assistant superintendents or supervisors employed. Under average conditions a county superintendent can not visit his schools more than once in a year, and then the visits must be short. In many counties it is a physical impossibility on account of the size of the counties, the poor roads, the number of schools, and the length of the term, for the superintendent to visit all schools each year. Much of the superintendent's time is lost in traveling from one school to another. This time is saved with consolidation. ..

In the ideal school, children are grouped in classes, each class containing as nearly as possible children of the same degree of advancement. In the ordinary one-teacher schools there are not enough children of the same degree of advancement to form classes large enough for the inspiration coming from class work and the friendly rivalry between pupils. ... The class work in the class of from 1 to 5 children is not interesting. In classes of from 8 to 20 it is interesting. Boys and girls enjoy going to school more; they “do” better and they attend more regularly, because of their greater interest. Attendance at consolidated schools, even where transportation is not furnished, is as a rule better than at the old district schools.

The excessive time allotted to study in the rural school, in proportion to the time given to recitation, is one of the objectionable features of the school. Few rural schools have sufficient, proper, and profitable reading material to give to the pupils during this long period. Few pupils can spend profitably the time in study because in the short recitation period the teacher has no time to direct extensive study. ... Consolidation of schools makes fewer classes to each teacher, and consequently makes longer recitation periods possible. ...

The ordinary teacher in the one-room country school can teach little but reading, spelling, writing, arithmetic, geography, and a

The advantage of the longer recitation periods made possible by consolidation.

66

little history, on account of the difficult conditions under which she Consolida

tion allows is working. It is, however, very desirable that music, drawing,

more subsanitation, manual training, household arts, and agriculture be taught, jects to be both for their general culture and their utilitarian values, and also taught. for their value as vitalizing agents in the school curriculum. [These additional subjects cannot be taught in the one-teacher school, but can be taught when consolidation provides] a school of three or more teachers.

‘Possibly one of the greatest results accomplished by the con- Consolidasolidation of the rural schools is the establishment of the township the rural high schools. Students who could not have entered a high school had high school. they been compelled to leave home, attend these schools, and, in most cases, graduate from them. . . . [For example,] the great increase of students attending the high schools in Indiana in the last two years is due in great part to the work of consolidated schools.” The added value of the consolidated school over the small one- Socializing

effects of teacher school as a socializing agency can hardly be estimated. The

consolidalarger school brings its pupils into contact with several teachers and tion. a larger group of children than in the small school. . . . This contact with many children widens their visions and gives to them a breadth of view impossible in the small district. ...

One of the advantages of the consolidated school is the possibility Consolidaof maintaining a stable teaching force. . . . A permanent teaching the im

tion permits force is essential in making a school efficient and satisfactory. It provement

of the teachis particularly desirable that a good principal be obtained ... and

ing force. retained as long as his work is satisfactory. [This can be done in the case of the consolidated school more often than in the case of the smaller school, for where schools have been consolidated it is possible to pay teachers larger salaries, while, in addition, the higher standards of the consolidated school are naturally attractive to highgrade teachers.]

1

160. The development of community spirit in the country'

The realization that there is need for a more wholesome social life among farmers has of recent years stimulated the development

1 From the Wisconsin Country Life Conference, Third Annual Report. Madison, Wis., 1913; pp. 111-113, 115-118.

The school of community spirit in rural districts. The nucleus of rural social and the

life is almost always either the school or the church. On the whole, church as social cen

the rural school is developing more rapidly than is the rural church, ters in rural and in many sections social life has tended to develop around the districts.

school rather than about the church. The use of the rural school as a social center may be illustrated by the following account of the

Mendota Beach schoolhouse in Dane County, Wis.: The estab- [Formerly there was no schoolhouse in this vicinity, i.e. the rural lishment of

district between Madison and Middleton, Wis.,), and as recently a schoolhouse as 1900 the state superintendent of public instruction was obliged

to exercise the power given him by law and compel the organization of a school district, the engaging of a teacher, and the erection of

a school building. in a rural [When the schoolhouse was built and] opened for school purposes district in

in 1901, children from the neighborhood twelve years old and over Wisconsin.

attended, who up to this time had had no schooling. Grown men of the neighborhood, unable to read or write the English language, although reared here from childhood, have told how they were too far from school to attend in the winter, and in summer they were

needed on the farm. A Sunday Newcomers in the neighborhood were insisting upon religious School is

instruction for their children, and were asking why a Sunday School organized and allowed couldn't be opened in the schoolhouse. It was a new proposal and to use the

at first did not meet with favor. . [But at length better counsel schoolhouse. prevailed, and] seventeen persons, many of them children, met at

the schoolhouse on a Sunday afternoon and organized the Mendota Beach Sunday School. That first Sunday it was agreed, and the position has ever since been consistently adhered to, that the meetings should be strictly undenominational; that persons of any creed or no creed would be welcome; that the purpose of our gatherings would be to make us better neighbors and better citizens, and that we would make a study of the Bible to find in it whatever we could that would

help us in this purpose. . . Changed

At each annual school meeting the electors present vote on whether viewpoint toward a

the schoolhouse shall be opened to the Sunday School and other wider use of

community meetings. There was some hesitancy about authorizing the school plant.

these uses the first time the electors considered the question, but

at subsequent meetings the very objectors have declared that in their opinion the uses to which the schoolhouse has been put outside of school hours have been of larger value to the community than the regular school work.

At the time these meetings were started there were but one or two Some effects musical instruments in the whole community, almost no singing changed ability, and only one person who would attempt to play the organ viewpoint. at the meetings. A singing teacher was engaged from the city, and on Monday evenings for some twenty weeks the young people gathered at the schoolhouse and were taught to sing. To-day there is music in the day school, music at the Sunday School, and some musical instrument – violin, organ or piano - in nearly every home.

The school library had only some fifty volumes of children's books. Library imA Library Association was organized two years ago and a “one hun- provement. dred volume" State Traveling Library is now regularly to be found at the schoolhouse with the teacher as librarian.

The young people of the neighborhood have come forward as an The schoolactive social force. They first learned to sing. Then they arranged

house in

creasingly for a series of open social and literary meetings at the schoolhouse. used for soPrograms have been arranged with music, declamation, and debate, and live topics have been discussed. The young people and even the grown-ups are beginning to feel confidence in themselves. “Woman Suffrage," "Advantages of Country Over City Living,” “Good Roads,” “The Silo,” “Alfalfa, ;"> "How to Make the Hen Productive,” are some of the subjects that have been discussed. ...

Farm tenants, farm owners, business and professional people from Some rethe city who have moved into the community, and artisans and laborers meet together on a common footing at the schoolhouse and get each other's viewpoint. . . . [The opening of the schoolhouse to community uses has had great value socially]. . . . The folks are all neighbors now. . . . They move together and have a sense of individual and community strength in the consciousness of sympathy and union.

cial pur

poses.