608 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



SOME RURAL SCHOOL AND PROBLEMS. 



H. M . Ferrin, Before the Cherokee County Farmers'' Institute. 



Will anyone question the truth of the assertion, that, our public schools 

 with the influences which had their origin therein, has been one of the 

 strongest factors in solving thus far, the problem of self-government, which 

 has enabled this Nation to reach its present proud position among nations, 

 and start out in the twentieth century as one of the leading world powers. 

 And our public schools must be a yet more potent factor, if we are to man- 

 fully face, and intelligently solve the present and oncoming great world 

 problems; for they can only be solved by a thoroughly intellectual, industri- 

 ous and contented people. 



Avery large per cent of our citizens enter upon the active duties of life 

 equipped only with the training received in the homes and public schools, as 

 each is individually a part of the grand and complete whole, which must ad- 

 vance or recede, go up or down together, how essential then that our boys 

 and girls go from these sacred institutions of home and school, which should 

 work in unison, so trained that they will develop into honorable, useful and 

 wide-awake citizens. 



Every boy and girl should go from our public schools imbued with a 

 patriotism that will love public purity and respect law, go from them intel- 

 lectually and morally strong, that they may develop into men and women 

 that will frown upon every species of bribery and corruption, for a corrupt 

 and bribe-taking people can never successfully lead the way to universal 

 peace or to the recognition of the common brotherhood of humanity. 



Let the patrons of our rural public schools formulate as good a creed as 

 the teachers' creed, then pull together with the teachers for the better- 

 ment of our rural schools, and happy results must follow. 



How long, think you, can Iowa hold the present proud distinction of 

 being one of the foremost agricultural States, if by our apathy and indiffer- 

 ence, the rural schools become a less potent factor, which they certainly 

 will, unless we become actively interested in their improvement and give 

 the teachers a chance to do a more telling work. 



The present inefficient or poorly directed training of our rural young 

 people in the homes and schools is somewhat responsible for the deplorable 

 fact that a large per cent of our wide-awake boys and girls acquire a sort of 

 disgust for life on the farm, become enhanced, while away from home 

 attending the town or city high school, with city life; this, too, at an age 

 when they are not qualified to settle in their own minds, which place, coun- 

 try or city, offers the most inducement for a useful and pleasant life. Thus 

 it is that too large a per cent of those most needed in rural districts and 

 for whom there is a large and splendid field for development are lost to the 

 rural districts go to the towns. Some of these well qualified by nature, 

 backed by the more thorough education so universally given our children 

 of apparent promise, take first rank in business and- society, but a larger 

 percent become day laborers with little public spirit, or drift to irreparable 



