BISHOP] NATURE-STUDY IN RURAL SCHOOLS I 71 



But it has gradually come to us that that education which best 

 fits the child to live, also best prepares him for receiving higher 

 education. A happy, useful, intelligent existence during the 

 years of elementary scholastic education provides the best founda- 

 tion for higher education. In the more favored city schools 

 manual training and domestic art have become regular parts of 

 the courses of study. There has been a growing tendency to 

 carry this work further down in the grades until we now have in 

 many city schools the work in manual training and domestic art 

 from the kindergarten to the senior year of the high school. 

 This work is modified from the busy work of the little folks to the 

 technical work of the high school. 



There is as much need for this work in the rural community as 

 in the city. We have too long evaded the issue by declaring 

 that until we get the consolidated rural school the proper equip- 

 ment and teachers cannot be provided for doing this work in the 

 country schools. We cannot wait for the consolidated school. 

 It is here in some places, and will continue to grow in favor, but 

 there yet must remain for a long time thousands of one-room 

 rural schools where ninety per cent of those attending get all the 

 school edttcation that they ever receive. We must give them 

 such training that whatever direction their education may take 

 afterward they will have received a degree of training that will 

 open to them the possibilities for the fullest development of 

 education for the life of the home. 



This work can be successfully done in any rural school without 

 special equipment or a specially trained teacher, by following the 

 simple direction : Utilize the means at hand in doing the things 

 which can be done at the time and place of service. 



I can verify this no better than by giving the results ac- 

 complished in one rural school. This is the ordinary rural 

 school with conditions less favorable than in many other schools. 

 The results were reached largely because of the interest and 

 activity of the teacher. I quote here extracts from a paper read 

 before the association of rural teachers at the Nebraska State 

 Teachers' x\ssociation, December 28, 1907, by Miss Lulu S. 

 Wolford. the teacher in district No. 20, Pawnee county, Nebraska. 



"I have been requested to lay aside all conflicting modesty, and 

 to tell you exactly what has been accomplished during the past 

 three years in a rural school in Pawnee county, known as the 



