Home Makers' Cmfere^ice. 357 



those helpless boys and girls to sit and study in the strong glare of a 

 cross light, because her superior officers said they saw "no sense" in 

 changing the furniture's position, which change would have remedied 

 the difficulty in that room. These few of many similar instances are 

 cited to show the relation of home and school. The stream cannot rise 

 higher than its source, and is is self-evident that homes maintaining 

 modern standards of living would promptly demand from Board and 

 teacher, a clean, attractive, well-equipped school room, comfortably 

 heated, properly lighted and ventilated, with plenty of pure water to 

 drink, a working library (for the law provides for this today), and 

 outbuildings as carefully inspected as the school room. 



AVhy? Because six hours a daj^ five days of each week, for from 

 six to nine months, is spent here, during that time of life when en- 

 vironment is a dominant factor in education. 



Such conditions as just described point to a deplorable apathy of 

 public sentiment concerning rural schools; show they are not keeping 

 pace with general progress, and a moment's reflection will also show 

 how potent the influence of such schools is in driving boys and girls of 

 spirit, ability and ambition to the town centers ; for children are gre- 

 garious animals and the gayety, the glitter, the social life of the city 

 allures them too often to their own undoing ; certainly to the hurt of 

 the cause of more small farms and intensive farming. 



Now I wish I could throw on a screen before you some pictures 

 I have of another type of one-room school, pictures showing groups 

 of happy busy boys and girls doing the various kinds of hand work 

 there undertaken, and pictures of the products of their activity. Here 

 the people of the district have selected directors to serve the best inter- 

 ests of the children by employing the best teacher available for the money 

 at their command, have equipped the school as best they could, and have 

 granted the teacher full liberty for the conduct of her work. 



This building has a well-drained basement with a concrete floor and 

 furnace. In bad weather, the children spend the recesses here in play 

 or work as they choose. There is a work bench in one corner made by 

 the boys and fitted up with a few tools that have been loaned (saw, 

 hammer, plane, square, and chisel). Another corner is arranged for the 

 elementary agriculture, soils and plants being studied here without 

 littering up the class room. There is a school garden on the grounds 

 for the study of vegetables and flowers in season ; vines have been 

 planted by the pupils to cover the outbuildings which together with 

 shade trees beautify the premises. The girls of this school learn plain 

 sewing, darning, embroidering and this handwork being intelligently 

 directed serves not only as a stimulus to the book-work, but gives an edu- 



