728 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



palatial homes of the twentieth century. Sixty years ago log cabins dotted 

 our prairies of the west. Today houses with conveniences undreamed of 

 by our ancestors are found on many farms. There is nothing that adds' 

 to or detracts more from the life of the farmer and his family than the 

 home and all the environments and influences that go to make that home. 



The poet has sung of the meadows, brooks, hills and trees and in his 

 imagination he smells the fragrance of the new mown hay and the fresh 

 perfume of wild flowers and sees the glistening of the jeweled dew in the 

 grass, and so on. But we who have spent our lives on the farm know 

 that this is the poetry of farm life and that most of it is prose. Yet 

 there is no life that so nearly reaches an ideal one as that of a farmer. 

 No vocation has as great an unfolding, enlarging, cultivating, educative, 

 elevating process as its results. Then why shouldn't the home and its 

 surroundings be an ideal one. 



Outside of the immediate home no feature of country life helps or 

 hinders the making of an ideal home as the school, where the most vigor- 

 ous hours of the child's days are spent. The farmer has the entire re- 

 sponsibility of the making of this school. The welfare of our country 

 school is said to effect more homes directly or indirectly than the educa- 

 tional system of the towns and cities. Were the farmers' school tax three 

 times what it is now he couldn't put his money where he would realize 

 one-third as much from the investment as when used for the bettering 

 of his school. 



There is growing interest in the improvement of the rural schools, but 

 owing to the conservativeness of the farmer himself improvement has been 

 slow. When we know that in many states eighty-five per cent of the 

 children of the country schools never pass beyond the boundaries of the 

 school district so far as school training is concerned it is time to ask 

 are these children getting the best there is to be obtained along the lines 

 of instruction and training? The character of the home life on the farms 

 of future generations dpends upon this instruction and training. With 

 the uniform course of study now used there is no reason why a good 

 business education with the realities of a larger life should not be given 

 every boy and girl. To accomplish this, adequate compensation must be 

 given to justify teachers to qualify themselves not simply to meet the 

 requirements of the superintendent, but to acquire breadth and depth in 

 training that will make that teacher an inspiration to the farmer's chil- 

 dren to aspire towards the best things of life, to that which will develop 

 them into citizens who will stand for what is noble, good and true, who 

 will have a wider outlook and who will be in sympathy with all that is 

 best and richest in country life. 



It has been a hard matter to arouse the average farmer to the im- 

 portance of requiring a thorough preparation of those who desire to be 

 teachers in our country schools, but in no other way can our rural schools 

 be made what they should be. The consolidated school plan may be the 

 future solution of this question, but the present must be dealt with in 

 some other way. In a recent conversation with one who has had a life- 

 long experience in furthering the education of boys and girls from city 

 and country schools he declared the pupils whose fundamental training 



