264 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



Following the Secretary's report, Professor C. F. Curtiss of 

 Ames addressed the convention on "The Eural Education Prob- 

 lem." 



THE RURAL EDUCATION PROBLEM. 



PROF. C. F. CURTISS, AMES, IOWA. 



The problem of more directly relating the public school sysetm to the 

 work and life of the people is the foremost educational problem of the 

 present day. There is a well-nigh universal sentiment in favor of re- 

 directing our secondary school education. This is particularly true of 

 the rural schools, where conditions are such that it is impossible to main- 

 tain instruction of satisfactory kind and grade in a large number of 

 districts. We have not yet reached the stage of abandoned farms in 

 Iowa, but we have reached the stage of abandoned rural schools. We 

 have a great number of rural schools that ought to be abandoned for 

 some better .system. We have over 2,000 schools with an enrollment of 

 ten pupils or less, many of them with not over five, and we have over 850 

 schools with an enrollment of six or less. 



We have 12,640 rural schools in Iowa. Superintendent Riggs reports 

 that the school population in these rural schools has decreased 13,735 

 in three years. The total school enrollment in the public schools of Iowa 

 has decreased 55,562 during the past ten years. This is not a gratifying 

 showing for a state that has prided itself in its educational standards. 



The rural school problem is a vital problem from an educational stand- 

 point, and more than that, it has a vital relation to the rural life problem 

 about which there is so much concern, now that the state is actually los- 

 ing population. The rural life problem will not be solved until we find 

 a measurably satisfactory solution for the rural school, rural church and 

 good roads problems. It is not primarily a question of profits, or in- 

 creased production from the farms of the state. The prosperity that has 

 prevailed in recent years has hastened rural depopulation and led to 

 abandoned rural schools. Rural depopulation will continue in Iowa as 

 long as the educational and social conditions of the farm community 

 are unsatisfactory. The greater the farmer's accumulation of profits the 

 sooner he feels able to avail himself of the advantages afforded by the 

 city schools, and the imaginary comforts of a life of leisurely retirement. 

 The whole field of agriculture is being projected on a higher plane. The 

 farmer has a broader outlook and higher standards — higher standards 

 of life as well as of agriculture. He seeks for his children as good an 

 education as any schools afford. The rural schools are not being 

 abandoned because the rural pupils are out of school. It is because 

 they are in school somewhere else. The rural school no longer serves its 

 purpose. Each fall about 3,000 new teachers enter the rural schools. They 

 are in the main inexperienced, untrained, and out of sympathy with 

 country life and the country atmosphere. Those that develop real teach- 

 ing ability and fitness for their work soon obtain positions in graded 

 schools and other inexperienced teachers take their places. 



