THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 181 



willing to finance the chances of these boys and girls by manning the 

 schools with teachers of large enough caliber to hold them through the 

 eighth grade, or to develop the possibilities of their lives for strong and 

 useful careers. If such communities are ever to assume their normal 

 burden in economics, or the social life of the world, their boys and girls 

 must be carefully trained in the schools. 



These communities have not only lost their best men to the city, but 

 they have never tried to make the most of those who remained at home. 

 Here is the opening for the schoolmaster. He must gather up the waste 

 material in the persons of boys and girls, and by enriching and pro- 

 longing the course of study, hold them in the schools until they have 

 obtained something like a fair knowledge of the elementary necessities 

 of a life work. Now, the larger number of rural boys and girls leave 

 school at the end of the sixth or seventh grade. If a boy hangs on a 

 little longer it is because his parents force him to, and it is often at the 

 expense of his self-respect, for he must go on with younger pupils. He 

 is now twelve, or thirteen years old, and feels that, although staying in 

 school, he is not getting anywhere, while he might be at work earning 

 money. 



After the seventh grade the rural school is well-nigh chaotic. It is 

 pretended, by some school boards, that the full eight or nine grades 

 are taught, but the wholesale manner in which pupils from these schools 

 are turned down in the tests for the city high schools rather negatives 

 the claim. The following figures taken from the government school 

 report for 1903 are eloquent with misgivings. After the seventh, for 

 the whole country, 20 per cent, of the grade drop out of school. But in 

 the rural districts, where the seventh grade virtually finishes the course 

 of study, the number dropping out is over 50 per cent, of the grade, 

 which not seldom means all of the boys. The girls linger a little longer. 

 Here is a waste of energy, a loss of vital possibility for which any 

 amount of money saved can not compensate. Boys leaving school at 

 such stage have not obtained the elements of a common education. 



Still the country school has possibilities. Eaised to a normal 

 standard, generously equipped, and strongly manned, it can do much to 

 redeem the waste and apathetic life of the community. It possesses 

 the initiative of a renaissance, but it must be made the most of. In 

 order to accomplish such result a great many customs must be read- 

 justed to a new day and its larger environment. In this readjustment 

 we must be sure and begin low enough, by giving thought to what 

 hitherto has seemed insignificant, namely, the careful location of the * 

 schoolhouse, and its orientation. The school building should be in a 

 dry, sunny, sightly spot. Ordinarily it should face the southern com- 

 pass. This would move seven tenths of our rural schoolhouses, and turn 

 more than half of them end for end. It is not at all necessary that a 



