THE PROBLEM FOB THE BUBAL SCHOOL 175 



for whicli the school is constructed. (Fortunately notable exceptions 

 to this are increasing in number.) But where this is true, it is plain to 

 be seen that in a district where there is little taxable wealth there must 

 be either a very high tax rate, or the alternative of little school money, 

 and hence a poor school. Thus the state may levy the school tax and 

 distribute it, but when it levies a higher rate in one district than in 

 another, or distributes less to one district than to another, even though 

 that district may actually have more children to educate, it would seem 

 that there are at least some very important ways in which the schools 

 are not state institutions. 



It is because of this interpretation by the state that the rural school, 

 which along with many other phases of rural life, being left desolate by 

 the accumulation of wealth in the cities, has suffered. And by compari- 

 son with the city schools its suffering has been very real. For the rural 

 schoolhouse of to-day is of the same general type that was in vogue a 

 hundred years ago; a large percentage of its teachers have not only had 

 no professional training, but are teaching for the first time ; the teacher 

 rather rarely succeeds herself, and is often succeeded by one or two 

 others within a single year; one teacher has all the grades and teaches 

 from fifteen to thirty classes daily; poor library and no laboratory ap- 

 paratus, save some dust-covered curios bought from a clever agent by an 

 unsuspecting school director ; no play apparatus or director ; no domestic- 

 science or manual training; little agriculture; and little or no super- 

 vision. This may not be a pleasant picture, but for the United States 

 as a whole it is not badly overdrawn, in spite of many excellent signs of 

 awakening here and there. But it is only by comparison, point by point, 

 with a modern city system that the real poverty of the country school 

 becomes apparent. 



These are the conditions we are becoming conscious of to-day, and 

 they are provoking a serious study of the real underlying troubles. The 

 teacher, the preacher, the farmer, the banker, the legislator, the presi- 

 dent, all are asking the same fundamental question, each from his own 

 particular angle. The teacher sees that the country school is not vitally 

 tied up with its problem, the preacher finds that the country church is 

 disappearing, the banker realizes that a more successful handling of the 

 farming problem will aid his business, legislatures are looking to the 

 conservation of the soil and the destruction of farm pests, the national 

 government has looked after the important matter of credit for the 

 farmer, and the report of the Eoosevelt Country Life Commission speaks 

 in similar terms. Thus when we are counting the defects of the country 

 school we are only counting one group of symptoms. The trouble is 

 deeper and more far-reaching than any one institution. The problem 

 is therefore not the mere problem of the school, but the whole problem 

 of country life. 



