148 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



THE RURAL SCHOOL PROBLEM. 



BY PRES. J. L. SNYDER^ AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. 



Great as has been the progress in all lines of industry during the last 

 half century, the development in our educational system has fully main- 

 tained its place in the onward march. The graded school, high schools 

 and technical schools are almost entirely the work of the last half cen- 

 tury. Colleges and universities have increased a hundred fold in number. 

 Their courses of study have been broadened and strengthened and their 

 equipment so enlarged and changed as to render them unrecognizable 

 by the student of fifty years ago. 



Methods of instruction are no longer questions of fact or fancies, but 

 are founded upon the science of the mind. Much, of course, is yet to be 

 gained in this direction but already the progress borders on the mirac- 

 ulous. A city child may now enter the kindergarten at four or five years 

 of age and pass step by step through the primary, the grammar and high 

 school grades receiving in all from twelve to fifteen years of thorough 

 careful instruction at public expense, but this is not all. He can enter 

 one of the higher institutions of learning and spend from four to ten 

 years more in general culture and in preparation for professional life. 

 Thus, to the city child broad is the gate and wide the way which leads to 

 education. 



But children do not all live in cities. About half the children of 

 Michigan live in the country. To the country child the opportunities 

 for securing an education in public schools are not very much better, 

 unless he have means to seek a school away from home, than they were 

 several decades ago. In many respects the rural school has deteriorated 

 in recent years. Better methods are used in teaching primary work, but 

 the instruction now stops with the eighth grade, whereas a few years 

 ago in many of the country schools algebra, geometry, and other high 

 school subjects were taught. Better wages were offered and older and 

 stronger teachers were secured. 



It has been a comparatively easy matter to establish high schools in 

 our cities and larger villages, but the country high school problem re- 

 mains unsolved. If the country child is bright and willing and the 

 parents ambitious and thrifty a way will be found. But the thrifty pa- 

 rents are not always ambitious to educate their children and the parents 

 who appreciate the advantage of an education do not always, nor even 

 often, have the income to gratify their desires. There are just as many 

 children in the country who would take advantage of a high school if it 

 were near at hand, as there are of our city children who do so. Indeed 

 it might be reasonably expected that even a larger percentage of 

 country children would attend high school than city children as induce- 

 ments to labor to help support the family are not so great in the country 

 as in the city. Country people appreciate to just as large a degree as 

 city people the benefits of a high school training. Last year the citizens 

 in our rural communities paid as tuition to our high schools over eighty- 

 eight thousand dollars. There were enrolled in the high schools of the 



