Chapter 7
The actual amount of salary paid rural teachers is perhaps more instructive than the comparative amounts. The income of the rural teacher is barely a living wage, and not even that if the teacher has no parental home, or a gainful occupation during vacation times. Out of an amount of less than four hundred dollars a year the teacher is expected to pay for a certificate, a few school journals and professional books, and attend teachers institutes or conventions, besides supporting himself as a teacher ought to live. It does not need argument to show that this meager salary forces a standard of living too low for efficiency. It would, therefore, be unfair to ask for efficiency with the present standard of salaries.
Nor is it to be overlooked that efficiency and salaries must mount upward together. It would be as unjust to ask for higher salaries without increasing the grade of efficiency as to ask for efficiency on the present salary basis. It is probable that the eighteen- or nineteen-year-old boys and girls starting in to teach the rural school, with but little preparation above the elementary grades, are receiving all they are worth, at least as compared with what they could earn in other lines. The great point of difficulty is that they are not worth enough. The community cannot afford to buy the kind of educational service they are qualified to offer; it would be a vastly better investment for the public to buy higher teaching efficiency at larger salaries.
No statistics are available to show the exact percentage of increase in rural teachers' salaries during recent years, but this increase has been considerable; and the tendency is still upward. In this as in other features of the rural school problem, however, it will be impossible to meet reasonable demands without forsaking the rural district system for a more centralized system of consolidated schools. To pay adequate salaries to the number of teachers now required for the thousands of small rural schools would be too heavy a drain on our economic resources. Under the consolidated system a considerably smaller number of teachers is required, and these can receive higher salaries without greatly increasing the amount expended for teaching. In this as in other phases of our educational problems, what is needed is rational business method, and a willingness to devote a fair proportion of our wealth to the education of the young.
_Supervision of rural teaching_
Our rural school teaching has never had efficient supervision. The very nature of rural school organization has rendered expert supervision impossible, no matter how able the supervising officer might be. With slight modifications, the office of _county superintendent_ is, throughout the country, typical of the attempt to provide supervision for the rural school. While such a system may have afforded all that could be expected in the pioneer days, its inadequacy to meet present-day demands is almost too patent to require discussion.
First of all, it is physically impossible for a county superintendent to visit and supervise one hundred and fifty teachers at work in as many different schools scattered over four or five hundred square miles of territory. If he were to devote all his time to visiting country schools, he would have only one day to each school per year. When it is remembered that the county superintendent must also attend to an office that has a large amount of correspondence and clerical work, that he is usually commissioned with authority to oversee the building of all schoolhouses in his county, that he must act as judge in hearing appeals in school disputes, that he must conduct all teachers' examinations and in many instances grade the papers, and, finally, that country roads are often impassable, it is seen that his time for supervision is greatly curtailed. As a matter of fact some rural schools receive no visit from the county superintendent for several years at a time.
A still further obstacle comes from the fact of the frequent changes of teachers among rural schools. A teacher visited by the county superintendent in a certain school this term, and advised as to how best to meet its problems, is likely to be in a different school next term, and required to meet an entirely new set of problems.
This is all very different from the problem of supervision met by the town or city superintendent. For the town or city district is of small area, and the schools few and close together. If the number of teachers is large, the superintendent is assisted by principals of different schools, and by deputies. The teaching force is better prepared, and hence requires less close supervision. School standards are higher, and the coöperation of patrons more easily secured. The course of study is better organized, the schools better graded and equipped, and all other conditions more favorable to efficient supervision. It would not, therefore, be just to compare the results of supervision in the country districts with those in urban schools without making full allowance for these fundamental differences.
The county superintendent is in many States discriminated against in salary as compared with other county officers, and, as a rule, no provision is made to compensate for traveling expenses incurred in visiting schools. This, in effect, places a financial penalty on the work of supervision, as the superintendent can remain in his office with considerably less expense to himself than when he is out among the schools. In some instances, however, an allowance is made for traveling expenses in addition to the regular salary, thus encouraging the visiting of schools, or at least removing the handicap existing under the older system. An attempt has also been made in some States to relieve the county superintendent of the greater part of the clerical work of his office by employing for him at county expense a clerk for this purpose. These two provisions have proved of great help to the supervisory function of the county superintendent's work, but the task yet looms up in impossible magnitude.
The county superintendency is throughout the country almost universally a political office. In some States, as, for example, in Indiana, it is appointive by a non-partisan board. But, in general, the candidate of the prevailing party, or the one who is the best "mixer," secures the office regardless of qualifications. Sharing the fortunes of other political offices, the county superintendency frequently has applied to it the unwritten party rule of "two terms and out," thus crippling the efficiency of the office by frequent changes of administration and uncertainty of tenure.
No fixed educational or professional standard of preparation for the county superintendency exists in the different States. If some reasonably high standard were required, it would do much to lessen the mischievous effects of making it a political office. In a large proportion of cases the county superintendent is only required to hold a middle-class certificate, and has enjoyed no better educational facilities than dozens of the teachers he is to supervise. The author has conducted teachers' institutes in the Middle West for county superintendents who had never attended an institute or taught a term of school. The salary and professional opportunities of the office are not sufficiently attractive to draw men from the better school positions; hence the great majority of county superintendents come from the village principalships, the grades of town schools, or even from the rural schools.
A marked tendency of recent years has been to elect women as county superintendents. In Iowa, for example, half of the present county superintendents are women, and the proportion is increasing. In not a few instances women have made exceptional records as county superintendents, and, as a whole, are loyally devoted to their work. They suffer one disadvantage in this office, however, which is hard to overcome: they find it impossible, without undue exposure, to travel about the county during the cold and stormy weather of winter or when the roads are soaked with the spring rains. Whether they will be able to effect the desired coördination between the rural school and the agricultural interests of the community is a question yet to be settled.
In spite of the limitations of the office of county superintendent, however, it must not be thought that this office has played an unimportant part in our educational development. It has exerted a marked influence in the upbuilding of our schools, and accomplished this under the most unfavorable and discouraging circumstances. Among its occupants have been some of the most able and efficient men and women engaged in our school system. But the time has come in our educational advancement when the rural schools should have better supervision than they are now getting or can get under the present system.
The first step in improving the supervision, as in improving so many other features of the rural schools, is the reorganization of the system through consolidation, and the consequent reduction in the number of schools to be supervised. The next step is to remove the supervising office as far as possible from "practical" politics by making it appointive by a non-partisan county board, who will be at liberty to go anywhere for a superintendent, who will be glad to pay a good salary, and who will seek to retain a superintendent in office as long as he is rendering acceptable service to the county. The third step is to raise the standard of fitness for the office so that the incumbent may be a true intellectual leader among the teachers and people of his county. Nor can this preparation be of the scholastic type alone, but must be of such character as to adapt its possessor to the spirit and ideals of an agricultural people.
A wholly efficient system of supervision of rural teaching, then, would be possible only in a system of consolidated schools, each under the immediate direction of a principal, himself thoroughly educated and especially qualified to carry on the work of a school adapted to rural needs. Over these schools would be the supervision of the county superintendent, who will stand in the same relation to the principals as that of the city superintendent to his ward or high school principals. The county superintendent will serve to unify and correlate the work of the different consolidated schools, and to relate all to the life and work of the farm.
If it is said that systems of superintendence for rural schools could be devised more effective than the county superintendency, this may be granted as a matter of theory; but as a practical working program, there is no doubt that the office of county superintendent is a permanent part of our rural school system, unless the system itself is very radically changed. All the States, except the New England group, Ohio, and Nevada, now have the office of county superintendent. It is likely, therefore, that the plan of district superintendence permissive under the laws of certain States will hardly secure wide acceptance. The county as the unit of school administration is growing in favor, and will probably ultimately come to characterize the rural school system. The most natural step lying next ahead would, therefore, seem to be to make the conditions surrounding the office of county superintendent as favorable as possible, and then give the superintendent a sufficient number of deputies to make the supervision effective. These deputies should be selected, of course, with reference to their fitness for supervising particular lines of teaching, such as primary, home economics, agriculture, etc. A beginning has already been made in the latter line by the employment in some counties, with the aid of the Federal Government, of an agricultural expert who not only instructs the farmers in their fields, but also correlates his work with the rural schools. This principle is capable of almost indefinite extension in our school system.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: See Coffman, _The Social Composition of the Teaching Force_.]
[Footnote 6: _The Social Composition of the Teaching Population._]
OUTLINE
I. THE RURAL SCHOOL AND ITS PROBLEM
=The General Problem of the Rural School=
1. The general problem of the rural school identical with that of all schools 1
2. The newer concept measures education by efficiency 2
3. This efficiency involves (1) knowledge,(2) attitude, (3) technique, or skill 3
4. The purpose of the school is to make sure of these factors of efficiency 4
=The Special Problem of the Rural School=
1. Each type of school has its special problem 5
2. The rural school problem originates in the nature of the rural community 5
3. Characteristics of the rural community 6
_a._ Its industrial homogeneity 6
_b._ Its social homogeneity 7
_c._ Fundamental intelligence of the rural population 8
_d._ Economic status and standards of living 10
_e._ Rural isolation and its social effects 10
_f._ Rural life and physical efficiency 11
_g._ Lack of recreations and amusement 12
4. Recent tendencies toward progress in agricultural pursuits 12
5. The loss of rural population to the cities 13
=The Adjustment of the Rural School to its Problem=
1. Failure in adjustment of the rural school to its problem 17
2. The rudimentary education received by rural children 17
3. Failure of the rural school to participate in recent educational progress 18
4. The rural school inadequate in its scope 19
5. Need of better organization in the rural school 20
6. Inadequacy of rural school buildings and equipment 21
7. The financial support of the rural school 22
8. Summary and suggestions 23
II. THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF THE RURAL SCHOOL
=The Rural School and the Community=
1. The fundamental relations of school and community 25
2. Low community standards of education 25
3. The rural community's need of a social center 26
_a._ Its social isolation a serious drawback 27
_b._ Grave moral dangers arising from social isolation 28
_c._ Rural environment more dangerous to youth than city environment 29
_d._ Effects of monotony on adults 30
4. The rural school as a social center 30
5. The ideal rural school building and equipment 32
6. Social activities centering in the school 33
7. Reorganization needed to make the rural school effective as a social and intellectual center 34
=The Consolidation of Rural Schools=
1. Consolidation the first step toward rural school efficiency 35
2. Irrationality of present district system 36
3. Obstacles in the way of consolidation 37
4. The present movement toward consolidation 38
5. Effects of consolidation 40
_a._ On attendance 41
_b._ On expense 41
_c._ On efficiency 42
6. The one-room school yet needed as a part of the rural system 42
=Financial Support of the Rural School=
1. Lack of adequate financial support of rural schools 43
2. Difference in city and rural basis for taxation 44
3. Low school tax characteristic of rural communities 45
4. State aid for rural schools 46
5. Safeguards required where the principle of state aid is supplied 47
6. Summary and conclusion 48
=The Rural School and its Pupils=
1. The spirit of the pupils as a test of the school 50
2. The negative attitude of rural pupils toward their school 51
3. Causes of this defection to be sought in the school 51
4. The problem of poor rural school attendance 52
5. The consolidated school as a cure for indifferent attitude and poor attendance 53
III. THE CURRICULUM OF THE RURAL SCHOOL
=The Scope of the Rural School Curriculum=
1. The modern demand for a broader education 57
2. The meagerness of the rural school curriculum 58
3. The rural child requires full elementary and high school course 60
4. Disadvantages of sending rural child to town school 60
5. Necessary reorganization in rural school offering broadened curriculum 62
6. General nature of the new curriculum 62
=The Rural Elementary School Curriculum=
1. Relation of the curriculum to social standards and ideals 64
2. The mother tongue 65
_a._ Necessity for its mastery 65
_b._ Learning the mechanics of the language 66
_c._ Developing the art of expression, oral and written 67
_d._ Creation of love for reading 67
_e._ Formal grammar out of place in the elementary school 68
3. Number 69
_a._ The prominent place occupied by arithmetic 69
_b._ Importance of development of the number concept 69
_c._ An undue proportion of time devoted to arithmetic 70
_d._ Desirable changes in the teaching of arithmetic 71
4. History and civics 71
_a._ The right and duty of every person to know the history and government of his country 72
_b._ History not to deal chiefly with war and politics, but to emphasize the social and industrial side 72
_c._ The library of historical books 73
_d._ Functional versus analytical civics 73
5. Geography and nature study 74
_a._ Advantage of the rural school in this field 74
_b._ The social basis of geography 75
_c._ Application of geography and nature study to the farm 75
6. Hygiene and health 76
_a._ Criticism of older concept of physiology for the elementary school 76
_b._ Content of practical course in hygiene 77
_c._ Application of hygiene to the child's health and growth 77
7. Agriculture 78
_a._ Adaptability to the rural elementary school 78
_b._ Content of the elementary course in agriculture 79
_c._ Relation to farm life 79
8. Domestic science and manual training 79
_a._ Place in elementary rural school 80
_b._ What can be taught 80
_c._ Its practical application 80
9. Music and art 81
_a._ Necessity in a well-balanced curriculum 81
_b._ Appreciation rather than criticism the aim 81
10. Physical training 81
_a._ Need of physical training of rural children 82
_b._ Rural school athletics 82
=The Rural High School Curriculum=
1. Rural high schools not yet common 83
2. The functions of the rural high school 84
3. English in the rural high school 84
_a._ Its aim 85
_b._ Points of difference from present high school course 86
4. Social science to have an applied trend 86
5. The material sciences as related to the problems of the farm 87
6. Manual training and domestic science 89
7. A modified course in high school mathematics 89
8. Foreign language not to occupy an important place 90
9. The high school course to include music and art 90
IV. THE TEACHING OF THE RURAL SCHOOL
=The Importance of Teaching=
1. Teaching the fundamental purpose of the school 92
2. The child and the subject-matter 92
3. The teacher as an intermediary between child and subject-matter 93
4. Hence the teacher must know the nature of the child 94
5. The teacher must know the subject-matter of education 95
6. Failure to measure up to this requirement 97
=Teaching in the Rural School=
1. The degree of training of rural teachers in the subject-matter 98
2. Present lack of professional training 100
3. The effects of inexperience 101
4. Short tenure of service in rural schools 102
5. Level of teaching efficiency low 103
6. Improvement through consolidated schools 104
=The Training of Rural Teachers=
1. Inexperienced and untrained teachers begin in the rural schools 105
2. Normal schools supply few teachers to rural schools 106
3. A reasonable demand for training of rural teachers 107
4. Rural teacher training in normal high schools 107
5. The rural teacher's training must be adapted to spirit of rural school 108
=Salaries of Rural Teachers=
1. Salary as a measure of efficiency 109
2. Salaries of rural teachers compared with town and city teachers 110
3. Necessity of increased salaries 111
4. Increase in salary and in efficiency must go together 111
5. Salaries in consolidated schools 112
=Supervision of Rural Teaching=
1. Impossibility of giving district schools efficient supervision 112
2. Obstacle in number of schools and frequent change of teachers 113
3. Comparison of work of county superintendent with city superintendent 114
4. Political handicaps on county superintendent 115
5. The necessity of better educational standards and better salary for the county superintendent 116
6. Women as county superintendents 116