1 82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



school building should face the road, or be very near it. Light, 

 warmth, horizon, room to play, these are the important considerations in 

 locating a schoolhouse. Play, in the rural districts, is almost a for- 

 gotten art. ISTo provision is ever made for it. No ball grounds, or 

 tennis courts, or croquet lawns, are ever seen near the rural schoolhouse. 

 The boys get no training in team work, or athletics. The community 

 has yet to learn that a boy's play is a vital element in his education. 

 Here, in the location and layout of the school grounds, is the first use 

 of the rural school for community uplift. 



Moreover the curriculum of the rural school is faulty. It has been 

 kept at odds with its environment. In the midst of trees and flowers, 

 birds and bugs, the child has been held down to a study of words and 

 forms, and figures, not much related to his common life, and at the best 

 too abstract for him to digest. He learns nothing of agriculture, 

 mechanics, or biology. The children are not taught to study nature, or, 

 in the least, directed or instructed in their play, except in a few in- 

 stances. Nothing of manual training, even in simple forms, is ever 

 attempted. These things have been crowded out by the old-fashioned 

 literary curriculum. While there need be no neglect of reading, writing, 

 spelling, or arithmetic, still, it is true that " these ought ye to have done 

 and not to have left the others undone." Indeed, I would add to the 

 reading and writing, together with the elements of agriculture and 

 nature study, a systematic culture of memory selections, little enough 

 of which have I found in any school. But it calls for a teacher of cul- 

 ture and training to make and exploit such a curriculum. Here the 

 teacher is of paramount importance. 



The teacher must be capable of leadership in the community. For, 

 although these pupils may be learning only the elements, they must 

 still be shown, at the right time, the wider world, in unison with which, 

 when at their best, they also are moving. There must be opened to 

 them a world of deeper significance than that commonly seen. They 

 must be taught to feel the throb of a universe in the pulse beat of their 

 own hearts. They must be filled with enthusiasm for life. This calls 

 for a teacher of large caliber, of rich culture. It is a blunder, as well as 

 a waste of money, to select teachers for the rural schools, as is now 

 largely the custom, from the graduates of the high school. No one ought 

 to be employed to teach a country school who is not a graduate of col- 

 lege, or trained in the best normal schools, or one who, by industry and 

 experience, has gained an equivalent for such culture. 



Then, after the seventh grade, the schools would become much 

 more effective if they were centralized. The old district system has not 

 lost all of its value, for the first six grades, or perhaps seven, can be 

 taught in the old schoolhouse, providing that schoolhouse be rightly 

 orientated and equipped with playgrounds, and other necessities, quite 



