THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 183 



as well as in the center, and the children are within their mothers' 

 reach. But the next upper grades, in the rural community, must be 

 centralized, strongly manned, with an adequate curriculum. Here 

 manual training and elementary agriculture, can be taken in hand, and 

 when this is done in earnest and with skill and enthusiasm, it becomes 

 interesting, and by its appeal to the boy's larger self, holds him longer 

 in school. 



But the rural district needs a high school. It may be true that no 

 rural community can equip a school that would compare with the city 

 high school, where, now, some of the boys and girls are sent; neverthe- 

 less if it would take its own place in the world, the rural community 

 must have its own high school. For it is not the boys and girls that are 

 fitting for college, financed and forced by their parents, who create the 

 school problem here, but the boys and girls who have not so much as 

 heard that there is a college. It is the large number of pupils that might 

 attend high school, and possibly go up to college, were a high school 

 nearer home involving little, or no expense, and for which, to some 

 degree, their fathers were responsible, who complicate the school prob- 

 lem, and make it vital. No one can conjecture what talent, or slumber- 

 ing genius even a year in the high school might develop in the dullest 

 boy. And it is the possible boy and man who must be provided for. 

 The waste of possible men and women of greater parts than the common 

 life bears witness to among the farmers is great and sad. In the face 

 of so much latent energy of the highest kind, the talk one hears about 

 the expense of the thing is utterly unworthy of an intelligent com- 

 munity. It is indeed true that the farmer has suffered from the tax 

 system of our government more than any other class, but it is not so 

 much demanded that more money shall be raised, as that what is raised 

 be more intelligently expended; so placed that it can make returns in 

 character and in life. 



Now that the world, once more, is waking up to the fact that the 

 rural community is an absolute necessity in the economy of civilization, 

 a splendid opportunity opens before the schoolmaster to make himself 

 felt. Here the schoolhouse may become the power house of a higher 

 life. But the master must have the training necessary to reach the 

 practical element in these problems; he must be able to meet the boy's 

 need of a dignified curriculum, and he must possess in himself a never- 

 ending fund of imagination, of enthusiasm, and of long vision. Given 

 such a man backed by a well-equipped schoolroom, and the community 

 has a powerful asset towards grappling with the new life of the day, 

 and meeting the economic, political and moral demands now being 

 made upon it. 



