Chapter 2
To contrast the divorce situation in the country with that in the city also fails to give the basis for social optimism that the facts are often used to prove. Public opinion has more to do with actions than law, and at present the general attitude toward the granting of divorce is more conservative in the country than in the city. The reason for this difference is, in large measure, the fact that once again the country shows itself less sensitive to the changes that are taking place with reference to the conditions of marriage. It certainly is not safe to assume that the unhappy marriages in the country are in proportion to the number of divorces. It is more likely that unless the urban attitude changes, in time the country will come to feel toward divorces much as city people do at present.
It is important to notice that, although legal divorce is frowned upon, there is often a considerable social indifference to the loose living together of men and women. Two clergymen at work in a rural community of about a thousand people recently stated that there were in the community at least forty unmarried people living together as husband and wife. Later, I was informed by another resident of the town that the clergymen had not exaggerated the situation. And yet I doubt not that the community had a rather low divorce record. It is very interesting how the moral code of a community may be strict at one point, while lenient at another. In some rural communities, at least, one may find an inconsistent public opinion that expresses very rigid hostility to divorce and little practical opposition to lax sex relations. The low attitude toward the sex element in marriage and the coarse viewpoint disclosed by conversation often surprise the country visitor who is not acquainted with the occasional inconsistency of rural ethics. Judging the standing of married life by infrequent divorces and rather early marriage, he is painfully disconcerted to discover that the marriage ideal is nevertheless mean and lacking in social inspiration.
A third criticism is deserved by the rural family, namely, its failure to make use of its social opportunity. It is easy to demonstrate the greater normality of the rural family as compared with the urban family, with respect to the family conditions that make possible an efficient home life. It is not always true, however, that these superior family opportunities are of social value. It is true that children are generally valued in the rural home. This is, at times, for the supposed economic help the children are expected to be to the parents, rather than because of an unselfish regard for the children, as a moral opportunity. It is true that the home generally counts for more in the life of the country child than in that of the city child. This by no means proves that the greater home influence is always a social asset. The home may penetrate the child's life deeply and yet affect it badly. If the home means more, the character of the home comes to have a larger meaning; what the significance of the home influence may be, is determined by the type of the home. A greater opportunity for family fellowship is naturally offered by the rural home, but this fellowship opportunity works both ways. The closer contact of all the members of the family often results in bringing all of them down to a low level of culture. The base attitude of one or of both parents toward life may poison each child's aspiration as he advances into maturity. The neighborhood relation, which brings several families into close contact, often permits a vicious child of one family to initiate many children from various homes into sex experiences in such an unwholesome way that purity of mind becomes very difficult later on, whether the illicit intercourse comes to an end or not.
Rural people are too likely to be content with their superior family conditions. There is real need for an emphasis upon the proper use of these opportunities. The conscientious urban parent is stimulated to his best by the rivalry of other attractions that attempt to exploit his child. The rural parent has no security in the greater natural advantages of the country home. Everything depends upon the way the rural home makes use of its opportunity. The rural church, especially, should take to heart this remarkably significant fact.
No institution in the country has the importance of the family. Good moral strategy requires, therefore, that effort be made to make the rural home happy and wholesome. The needs of rural people are indeed many, but there is no need greater than the fullest development of the opportunities for moral progress provided by the conditions of family life in the country. It would seem as if one principle should always be observed--no effort is wholly good that looks toward a substitution for family responsibility. It is also true that the family will not again have the moral monopoly of the child. Necessary as it may be, in certain cases, to allow the family to farm out its important functions to some other institution, this condition ought always to be recognized as unfortunate. The better way of making permanent progress is effort that encourages the family to make better use of its neglected opportunities.
First of all, the rural home needs to be spiritualized. Of course, there is equal need of spiritualizing the urban home, but that problem does not concern us now. Objections are sure to be raised against any rural program that bases itself upon an attempt to emphasize idealism and a spiritual interpretation of experiences. There is, however, no other way. Material progress will neither content nor elevate country life. Contact with nature is so close and constant that when spiritual insight is lacking there is bound to be a fatalistic and brutalizing tendency. Religion that does not enter intimately into everyday life and enrich the baffling experiences of daily labor with great spiritual interpretations, gives little of value to country people. The rural home awakens to its opportunities only when it is invigorated by vital spiritual inspiration. A materialistic philosophy of life will eat the heart out of the country and leave it in despair. Country people seldom have wide choice; they must either penetrate common experience with the eye of confident idealism, or they must dig the earth, bent down with the oppressing burden of dissatisfied toil. Whatever the philosophy of life, it will command the spirit of the home.
Parents also need training if they are to make successful use of the opportunities placed in their hands. This training needs especially to give the parents a right point of view respecting sex and sex-instruction. At present there is a powerful taboo in most country places regarding any constructive attempt to give helpful sex information, although, as a matter of practice, conversation often gravitates toward sex in a most unwholesome fashion. The taboo is fixed for the most part upon any public recognition of sex, while privately, interest in matters of sex is taken for granted. We have gossip and scandal, but little right-minded attention to sexual knowledge. This condition must change before many families will be fit to win the full confidence of the children and to influence them toward a high-minded outlook upon life.
We must appreciate the very valuable efforts that are already being put forth to make the rural homes more efficient with reference to sanitation, hygiene, and proper food. This instruction promises to decrease much human suffering, discontent, and poverty. In some respects such constructive service is more needed in the country than in the city. Certainly, good results are already appearing as a result of the efforts that institutions and people interested in the country have put forth.
The rural family must be made to realize the consequential character of childhood experience. The alienist especially has demonstrated the significant influence of childhood upon adult motives and conduct. Recent studies of human conduct have greatly magnified the importance of early experience and have disclosed how often it is the first cause of morbid thinking and anti-social actions. The conclusion is not to be doubted--a still greater effort must be made to conserve human character by a wiser control of the influences of childhood. One may discover for himself how interested conscientious parents are in detailed illustrations of childhood influence upon adult life and how impressed they are with the seriousness of such facts. Rural families must be taught more generally this impressive contribution of modern science.
A much greater effort must be made in many localities to lift from the rural family the burden of the feeble-minded. The possible harm that may be caused by a high-grade feeble-minded boy or girl in the country can be appreciated only by one who has come in contact with such a problem. The close contact, free association, and common interests of rural folk, with the added difficulty of segregating one's child, even when the menace of a feeble-minded associate is fully recognized, make the presence of feeble-minded boys and girls in the country a more difficult and more serious matter than is the case at present in the city. The school and the state, that is, the state by means of the opportunity provided by the schools, must take more effective measures to handle this problem. Until this has been brought about by public education and agitation, many rural families will be required to encounter serious moral dangers and problems for which society is itself responsible.
The rural family needs to be taught to be more just and more generous in regard to other families. The clannish spirit ought to pass, for it is without excuse in these days. The family interests a generation ago were altogether too narrowly conceived to make a wholesome social life possible. Greater cooperation is necessary if rural people are to make progress, and this cooperation is impossible when families are jealous and suspicious. This obstacle in the way of wholesome rural culture, made by selfish and petty family motives, it is useless to ignore. Unless the obstacle can be pushed aside, other efforts to inspire country people to a realization of their social opportunities must surely fail. Family life in the country can be saved from its besetting sin when rural leadership undertakes this task with the seriousness its importance justifies.
The rural family must be led to adopt a positive morality. This is imperative. The age of prohibition as an expression of ideals has passed. Emphasis must be placed upon what we should do, and must be removed from a trivial and legalized code of "Don'ts." Here and there in the country we find a firmly entrenched negative interpretation of moral obligation. Nothing is so dangerous morally as this. Nothing can so certainly drive out of the community the broad-minded, fine-spirited youth. The family must interpret morality with good sense and with a full regard for the proportions of things. The parents must teach a better moral standard than they themselves were taught. The home morality must have the flavor of kindliness and sweet reasonableness. Morality, to be true to its essence, does not require that it be made disagreeable. Goodness is beauty expressed in human conduct and, therefore, deserves freedom to disclose its winsome charm as well as its stern pre-eminence.
This program for constructive social service in the country is largely based upon the conservation of the moral and spiritual resources of the country. The deepest need of the country can be satisfied by no smaller propaganda. The instruments for such service we already have. The country school, the country church, neighborhood fellowship, and the Young Men's Christian Association provide the means for a moral and spiritual renaissance in the country. There is no easier way to obtain a healthy rural family life than by a skilful, serious, and large-hearted use of our moral institutions in concrete, courageous, and modern instruction, and in persuasive inspiration.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Published as a part of the report of the fifth Country Life Conference by Association Press under the title, "The Home of The Countryside."
THE RURAL WORKER AND THE COUNTRY SCHOOLS
III
THE RURAL WORKER AND THE COUNTRY SCHOOLS
Of late the rural schools have been receiving much attention. Educators and others interested in rural welfare have seriously studied the needs and opportunities of our country schools and the good results of this interest are already revealing themselves. It is true, of course, that much of this contribution to the rapidly increasing literature devoted to rural educational problems has come from men who live in urban communities and who for the most part have expert knowledge concerning the administration of urban schools.
It is easy, without doubt, to give too much emphasis to the peculiar needs of the rural schools and to forget that urban and rural schools have much in common. Without forgetting that many of our school problems are fundamental and present in all schools regardless of the environment in which they attempt to function, it is reasonable to regret that a larger part in the discussions relating to rural education has not been taken by people living in the country and familiar with the rural life of the present time. It is only just to add, however, that both urban and rural education suffer because so little influence comes into school theory and practice from those who stand outside the profession of teaching. The teacher is not likely to know life so widely or so accurately as do those men and women who have won success by meeting actual situations that test practical judgment and sound self-control. Every one subscribes to the statement that the business of education is the preparation of pupils for life, every one knows that the value of such a preparation can be made certain only by being brought under the acid test of the actual conditions of social life, but few there are that realize that one of the ever-present problems of educational efficiency is due to the fact that the thinking that influences the purposes and methods of teachers mostly originates within the profession itself. The significance of this would be apparent were it true that all of one's education for life comes from the schools; happily, this is not true, and most pupils obtain valuable experiences from actual contact with problems of life that impress them more deeply than the preparation which at the same time the school is trying to give.
The rural worker needs to feel a responsibility for the making of some contribution to the rural school's social program. He cannot help having some advantages, in judging the results of school training, over the teacher who is busy with the process of instruction itself. Without doubt the rural worker has felt incompetent to enter much into educational discussion, thinking that such matters are sacred to those who have pedagogic training, but a moment's thought convinces one that, since the teacher has more to do with the preparation for life than the living of life, it is socially unsafe for the teacher to have a complete monopoly of educational discussion and to obtain no help from those who test the product of his schools.
The rural school has at present needs that stand out. First, it needs to be socialized. This is true also of the urban school, but it is not equally true. Urban schools have to some degree responded to the pressure of modern life and have assumed in increasing measure a social function. There has been no such pressure from rural communities. Often the educational ideals for which country people have enthusiasm are composed of experiences in a school-spirit less social than that usually found in the rural school of the present time. This means that the pressure of public opinion often pushes backward, while the urban school is being forced forward.
Neither country school nor city school can obtain much success in its socializing program until it really ministers to the physical needs of its pupils. Theory to the contrary, the school system still forgets that the chief business of the child is the making of a body, and that for the sake of future personal and social welfare the needs of the body must have right of way. Until this fact of nature is given its full worth and the mental side of the school work is subordinated, public education can never be a complete success. So long as the body needs of the growing child are exploited for the purpose of obtaining mental results that appear to the adult outside of the teaching profession both trivial and premature, there can be no hope that the school will maintain a perfectly wholesome social program. This problem is certainly as serious in the country school as in the city school. This matter is no by-product. When the schools fail to conserve human possibilities by ignoring the regulations imposed by natural law upon the operation of their educational processes, the schools are socially negligent. They are faulty in the purpose for which they have been created.
The second difficulty comes from the first. The rural school still needs a larger program. When it seriously undertakes to assume its function as the most effective of our social institutions, it will make radical changes in its program. To affirm this one need not forget or undervalue the changes already made. Additions have been made to the program. The spirit of the program has not been radically changed. We still provide an individualistic preparation--hopelessly inadequate though it is--rather than the social training which can be the only safe foundation for social progress. We still overvalue ancient knowledge and former educational values. We still refuse to admit into our schools occupations and interests that belong there because they are consistent with the instincts of the child. The country school has been stupidly indifferent to the wealth of its resources and has forced upon its pupils a meager and lifeless program. When a country high school, for example, attempts to minister to the needs of its students with a program of study that includes no science of any kind, the people of that community ought to be told, as recently in one case they were, that they are enforcing an educational policy that prophesies community suicide.
The third difficulty of the rural school system is its institutionalism. No effective organization can be developed without creating in it the danger of too great institutional concern. Those who are connected with the schools very easily come to regard its problems from the point of view of the welfare of the organization rather than that of the best interests of the children. Of course this mistake is nearly always unconscious and those who are really influenced by the professional instinct to protect the immediate interests of the school as an institution come to believe that they are also doing the best that can be done for the people. It is, however, the clear teaching of human history that effort to maintain the welfare of any social organization is likely to decrease the attention given to its efficiency. The attitude of institutional self-protection leads to uncritical methods, easy-going content, and rigid, unprogressive habits of thought. In our public school system the vital influences are always in conflict with the constructive endeavor of those who, because of their desire for professional repose, insist that the institution keep its attention upon itself and continue as it happens to be. In the country this attitude is likely to receive less criticism than in the city and for that reason those who wish progress in the country must assume an unending struggle against it.
Whatever its faults, the rural school in its influence upon country youth has only one possible rival--the home. At present the school is obtaining more and more opportunity to influence young life; the home is losing more and more of the opportunities it once had. It behooves, therefore, any one who serves young life in the country, to appreciate what a power for good or for evil, for progress or for regression, the schools are. Every effort should be made to understand the schools. With the teachers sympathetic relationships should be maintained, but without even a tinge of subserviency. An unbiased judgment of the social value of the schools, known only to himself, should be constructed by the rural worker and then every effort should be made to cooperate with the striving of the school for better results and to supplement with generous spirit the necessary limitations of public school service. Indirectly and quietly the rural worker may wisely try to invest as much as possible of himself in the school's social service by working through those who control the public education of the community. No rural worker can expect a greater ally than an efficient, socially-minded country school.
THE COUNTRY CHURCH AND THE RURAL WORKER
IV
THE COUNTRY CHURCH AND THE RURAL WORKER
The difference between the urban and the rural church may easily be exaggerated. There are differences, of course, and it is natural that the rural worker and the student of country life should make too much of what is characteristic of the church ministering to country people. At bottom, however, the two types of churches share the same experiences. Therefore, what may be said in regard to one will prove also to be largely true of the other. For the purpose of giving emphasis to the work of the rural church, nevertheless, we are justified in forgetting for the moment how common to both forms of church life are the fundamental needs, resources, and possibilities.
Those who carry the burdens of church administration are generous in listening as they do to the criticism and counsels of those who stand outside. Indeed, so much has been said and is still being said in regard to the work of the country church, especially by those who are not clergymen and not responsible for the directing of church activity, that one may well hesitate to express another opinion. And yet the tolerance of those who have in charge the policy of the country church is in itself significant and invites additional suggestions regarding the function of the Christian Church in country places. It is significant because it discloses that the church leaders know that the rural churches have serious problems. It invites suggestions because it reveals that the leaders are in some measure perplexed as to what is required in our day of the country church, and are therefore not hostile to any contribution that has a constructive purpose.
Institutions tend to be self-satisfied and self-protecting. A religious institution especially is in danger of becoming content and resentful of criticism because, by its nature, it deals with matters that seem beyond the investigation that man prescribes for ordinary things, and therefore secure from the scrutiny and criticism given to common, everyday interests. Of course the Church has no right to protect itself from criticism with respect to its efficiency of service by asking that it be treated as if it were itself religion.
The fact that the leaders of the rural church are not taking this attitude is of all things most helpful. It proves that their eyes are directed outward toward their responsibilities and that the rural churches are not in danger of the greatest evil that ever befalls a religious institution--a blind leadership which cannot distinguish between success and failure and is therefore well content when it ought to be most dissatisfied.