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I am not afraid that too much consideration for others will be developed even if we do make a point of it. Public spirit is a part of altruism that may be made a habit. If the individual is inclined to think that society owes him a living, the schools must combat this idea, and show him that he owes something to society. Each child should do something for the school. Each child should feel some responsibility toward the school. Loyalty and consideration are thus developed.

If habit-building becomes the aim in education, education will not consist merely of work done in school. Anything that affects a child's habits is part of his education. The home at once becomes an educational institution. The school is really only the helper of the home. In order to establish habits of industry with the hands, the home must do its part, which it will gladly do. In every home there is work to be done. This home industrial work brings back to the school the home atmosphere, and enables the teacher to get an insight into the home conditions. It gives the teacher a talking acquaintance with home duties, and thus makes her a real individual to the pupils. It also enables the teacher to know what pupils are overworked at home. I think some of the greatest injustices in this world are wrought by teachers who do not know the home conditions of the pupils.

One thing everyone must keep in mind in school work is that with any real education the student must have a purpose, as well as the teacher. As soon as a teacher has discovered the bent of a child, has found what things that child likes to do better than anything else, she has gone a long way in establishing a purpose for his being in school; she has discovered the means of reaching the child's inner life. A teacher has not begun really to teach until she has found the pupil's bent. Each child at each stage of his development has some interest. It may not be a permanent one, but at the time it is the motive power that propels the ship. The real teacher adds fuel to the flame of his interest. A boy did not like mathematics. His teacher discovered he wanted to be a steamboat engineer. On his uncle's boat he had taken trips to Alaska. He had watched the engineer control the throbbing engine that propelled the ship for hours at a time. His teacher told him he could be a great engineer some time on a great ocean liner, but in order to do so he must understand mathematics. An ambition was awakened and a determination formed. By a little coaching he was able to make up a year's work in half a year, and it was not long before he was leading his class.

The first difference that definiteness of aim will make in our educational system will be a closer co-operation between the parent and the teacher, and a fuller realization of the influence of the community. When you have as the only aim in education the giving of knowledge out of books, there will be little real co-operation between teacher and parent, nor is there much need of the interest of the community. When the aim is to establish habits

-concrete, definite habits-there must be the co-operation of all these forces, and the teacher must realize that she is teaching a live, sentient being, who is influenced by all things with which he comes in contact. It will be discovered that the schoolroom is not the only place to impart knowledge, but that the critical moment and the most sacred time is whenever the child is in action, whenever he is doing the thing he wants to do, the thing that he finds worth while doing. The habit-building plan will lead to taking excursions with the child, and entering into the child's labors. It will mean going into situations with the child where sympathy is developed, and quick action is required. It will mean placing the child under such circumstances that his ego is for the time lost amid the multiplicity of impressions that flood in upon him. It is striking the iron while the iron is hot. It is living with boys and girls, teaching by example as well as by precept. It will mean that every parent will become a teacher. It will mean that every teacher will be, at least in some measure, in loco parentis.

THE NEW RURAL SCHOOL

NEIL C. MACDONALD, STATE INSPECTOR OF CONSOLIDATED SCHOOLS,
VALLEY CITY, N.DAK.

(An Abstract)

In order to develop the new rural school, we must be fully informed as to what the one-room school in the open country really is, and then we must reorganize this old rural school. There never can be any progress worthy of the name in any line except where all the conditions, both adverse and favorable, are known and appraised at their full value. It is never a pleasant task to recognize this fact and particularly is this so in the case of the rural school where the adverse conditions so dominate the situation. This, however, I shall try to do at this time. The praises of the little country school have been sung for more than a hundred years in every section of the land. We have been taught to look upon it as a school without fault and without blemish. And it has been a great institution. It is yet the greatest socializing and Americanizing agency in the rural community today. However, it has most serious faults which I shall proceed to name and describe.

This old rural school has been aptly described by our honored president, Dr. Fairchild, as "the one laggard in the educational procession." Some forty years ago it competed successfully with the town school, and it contributed its pro rata share toward American civilization, but it does neither thing today. For in the wonderful progress that has been made in all fields of human activity, it has failed to keep pace. We live in another day with vastly more complex duties to perform, and our nation needs not only an improved rural school, but a reorganized rural school-a new rural school.

THE NEW RURAL SCHOOL

The creation of the new rural school most needed to meet the demands of today calls for reorganization along two principal lines, viz.: (1) better school organization, which means consolidation; and (2) better attendance, which means longer terms and the daily presence of all available pupils. It is true that we need reorganization which would give us better financial support, better teaching, and better supervision which includes administration; but these will come largely as a part of the development of this new rural school.

Better school organization calls for consolidation. One of the two most serious defects to be found in the one-room rural school is the problem of the many grades and therefore too many classes per teacher, which, unsolved, largely nullifies the good effects of properly built and equipped buildings, and the best efforts of the best-trained teachers and supervisors. Consolidation, however, remedies this, for by the employment of two or three teachers the number of grades and classes per teacher is reduced. Experience has also shown that consolidation will in part overcome the most serious defect of the old school in the matter of poor attendance, which includes the short term, for consolidation is followed by better attendance, including longer terms. Consolidation makes it possible to secure betterpaid and better-trained teachers and better supervision than under the present system. It provides high-school privileges for the country youth while he is under the parental roof. This is cheaper and safer for all concerned, and it lays the foundation for rural leadership right at home. It provides the opportunity for the proper teaching of agriculture, household arts, and other subjects, and for the organization of civic-social centers on a scale that would make them more useful in every way.

To hasten and extend the growth of consolidation, we must have better laws to facilitate its organization, and in any case, we must have abundant state aid. This, too, like other reforms in rural-school education should be nation-wide. Consolidation is growing, for already thirty-two states have it in operation. But experience has shown that where the initiative for its organization is given largely to county or state authority, rather than to local, and especially where liberal state aid is provided, its growth is phenomenal.

The matter of poor attendance which includes the short term is the greatest defect in the rural school as we know it, and it presents the greatest problem in rural-school organization. An analysis of available statistics. shows that the average term for the one-room rural school in the open country is less than seven months, the percentage of attendance is less than 60, and as a direct result the percentage completing the eighth grade is less than 25, the boys falling below 15 per cent. This means that the average country boy can hope to complete the eighth grade only in about seventeen years, or when he would be about twenty-three or twenty-four years old;

while as a matter of fact, only one country boy in seven of any age completes this grade. Herein lies the damning tale in rural-school administration.

From this poor attendance have ensued many serious evils, such as high rural illiteracy, rural-to-urban migration, loss of rural national leadership, and the evils of rural child labor which are shown largely in the small number of boys who complete the eighth grade.

The causes of this poor attendance as related to rural child labor are due mainly to the practice of petty politics and mercenary greed. The new rural school costs more money-both to build and to operate. This means that that kind of politician who is by turns a political jacksnipe and a political pirate would of necessity oppose it; for he thrives upon cheap money and much ignorance of his fellow-man, that is, upon the evil results of child labor on farm or in factory. Another cause of this poor attendance in relation to child labor is "commercialism," that is, greed on the part of the rural resident. This is a tale of sordid greed and criminal thoughtlessness. The poor attendance including the short term costs little and so is favored by the mercenary rural resident. Then, too, children out of school and at work lessen the cost.

To improve the poor attendance and thus remove the evils of rural child labor, rural illiteracy, urban congestion, and loss of rural national leadership, there should be legislation establishing a minimum term of at least nine months and compulsory attendance until the eighth grade is completed or the sixteenth year is attained. This, like other reforms of national need, should be taken up by all states in order to give it greater force, effect, and following.

This new rural school, so greatly needed in every part of the Union, demands for its development, (1) improved organization, that is, consolidation, and (2) better attendance, which includes longer terms. These call for a campaign of investigation, publicity, and education to furnish new ideas and to create higher ideals among the rural population concerning their duties to their schools and country. To hasten and extend this campaign there ought to be greater co-operation among school officials of at least adjoining states. For instance, it is very difficult indeed for school officials in North Dakota to contend for a nine-month term with a strict enforcement of a compulsory attendance law, if over in Minnesota little or nothing is being done in this matter, or if the reverse be true. It requires united action of a group of adjoining states and that supplemented by all the states, in order to carry on this campaign to a successful issue.

I wish now to conclude with a picture of the new rural school, that already exists in some states, which fact gives us faith to believe, hope to endure, and courage to contend that this school shall finally be established practically everywhere in the open country. This school is housed in a commodious building that is modern in all its appointments. It is equipped

with splendid library and laboratory facilities. It is surrounded with a beautiful campus and well-planned experimental fields. It stands there a thing of joy, for it is a thing of beauty. In itself, it beckons and commands the youth of the community to enter its portals. The teachers are well trained, well paid, and well content. There is a home upon the grounds for the principal and his family, and for the teachers also. All available boys and girls attend regularly nine months, and they complete the eighth grade and high school with the same degree of regularity and efficiency that they do in the average town school. This school is more than a civic-social center, for it is an educational center in the best sense of that term. For here come young and old to consult with the instructors in agriculture, mechanic and household arts, literature, hygiene, and other subjects, to read in its splendid library, to see good works of art, to listen to inspiring lectures, to take part in literary and athletic exercises, to learn best how to grow old and young in a wise way.

EDUCATION AS THE INTERPRETATION OF LIFE

MARY C. C. BRADFORD, STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, DENVER, COLO.

(An Abstract)

It has been well said that almost all the battles of the world have been fought for the sake of so soulless a difference as that lying between conflicting definitions.

And yet there is reason in this strenuous advocacy of one or another kind of definition, for, if we may define a definition, it may be done in some such phrase as the following: A definition is a condensation in words of a principle, a thought, or a movement. It is, or should be, the verbal expression of essential truth.

When we concede this, it is not strange that the leaders of thought in the school world have long been seeking a definition of education that should be at once exact and expressive; that might contain the divine fire of educational inspiration in a form both logical and lucid. As a result, there have been almost as many definitions of education as there are distinguished leaders of educational thought, and, tho not ranking myself in that goodly company, perhaps I may be pardoned if I venture to give the definition of the august science and beautiful art, in whose service we are all enlisted, that has proved most helpful to me.

To my thinking, education is the interpretation of life in the terms of truth, beauty, efficiency, and service.

And the application of this interpretation should be the widest possible. To confine it merely to classroom problems is to limit and emasculate a vital philosophy, to cut off the power and purpose of a great profession from

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