FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 353 



OUR COUNTRY SCHOOLS. 



SUPT. H. E. SHELDON, CORUNNA, AT SHIAWASSEE COUNTY INSTITUTE. 



One of the most important things for a school is a good teacher. So important 

 is it that a good school is impossible without a good teacher. You can have just 

 as good school in a log school house as in one of brick. A good school is possible 

 without blackboard or any modern appliances for teaching. Garfield's model 

 school, you will remember, consisted of a log with the boy sitting on one end and 

 the teacher, Mark Hopkins, on the other. If you can get the boy, Garfield, and the 

 teacher, Mark Hopkins, together, you are sure to get results. The school is not 

 a place of refuge for those who have failed in other callings. It is not for the sake 

 of giving employment to those who are too proud to beg and too lazy to work 

 with their hands. Sometimes we hear a contrast between the teacher, who works 

 from nine to four, and the hired man on the farm, who works from sun to sun. 

 The latter, it is said, works more hours and ought to receive more. This criticism 

 I believe is just on any teacher who does not begin work until nine and who stops 

 it at four. It is cheaper to pay such a teacher to keep out of the school, for a 

 school will never be better than the teacher. It is better to close the schoolhouse 

 than to have a poor teacher. If a district cannot afford what is necessary to 

 secure a good teacher throughout the year, it is far better to have a good school 

 as many months as possible and no school at all the rest of the year. 



Once in a whi'le we will find a district that will engage the best teacher it can 

 get where there are many large scholars, but that thinks when the school is made 

 up of young pupils, that anything will do for them. I believe this idea is being 

 changed around. Those large pupils are able to get some good without any 

 teacher at all. These young pupils are dependent upon their teachers. Above all 

 others they need good instruction. If they do not have it, most of them will acquire 

 a dislike for school and will consider it merely a place of confinement. At the 

 very beginning, their chances for acquiring a good education will have been ruined. 

 In these early days the child can learn easier than at any other time. If children 

 attend school constantly from five to ten under good instruction, nine-tenths of 

 them will secure enough education to enable tifem to make their way fairly well 

 through life. If this early education be neglected, they must be securing the rudi- 

 ments of education in those years when they ought to either have reached a higher 

 plane in studies or to be doing useful work outside of school. And this early 

 study, properly cared for, will not injure the child. Children learn easily what 

 interests them. A child the first five years of his life learns what most of us 

 would find hard to learn in five years of study at school. He learns to speak new 

 language. And if he learns proportionately as much the next five years, he will 

 find himself at the age of ten a very good young scholar. 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF THE NEW WOMAN ON THE FARM. 

 MRS. E. D. NOKES, CHURCH, AT HILLSDALE COUNTY INSTITUTE. 



In their isolated homes they read of the marshaling of their sisters under new 

 business, and their listening ears catch the echo of the shouts of victory as they dis- 

 cover with their better opportunities, new worlds of thought and action, stirring 

 their hearts with a longing for the necessary drill to advance and protect their own 

 domain. The strength of this advice is manifested by the number of farmers* 

 wives with the gray around their temples who are reaching out and grasping every- 

 thing which will give them light and knowledge upon this new phase of existence. 

 They feel and know that their life work has been retarded by lack of skill and edu- 

 cational privileges. They realize that all professions require specific training and 

 facility in doing their work, and they are doing justice and judgment unto them- 

 selves by seeking the way and means for this training. Their individual work has 

 been one of the greatest factors in the creation of the material wealth and pros- 

 perity of this great State. 



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