24 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



— its healthiness, the beauties of Nature, the character of its pecu- 

 liar occupations, as being — fatiguing, indeed, it may be — but not 

 wearing out natural force, as is factory work, nor shortening life ; 

 the closer ties of family coherence, all members being more or less 

 engaged in the same common work ; the family-like relations deve- 

 loping among neighbours ; its simplicity ; the absence of tempta- 

 tions, not only to extravagant expense but also to the moral poison- 

 ing of life ; and one might add more — that it ought for its own sake 

 to be prized rather than rated low. Only, those who grow up in it 

 want to be taught to value its advantages, because it is distinctly 

 human to fail to appreciate that which has become thoroughly 

 familiar, the benefits of everyday life. It is generally only bien 

 perdu which is bien connu. Rural education wants to be made 

 " rural," to be clad in a distinctly rural garb, to be made to teach 

 specifically rural things and to teach them in a rural way. 



That does not in the least imply that such education is to become 

 less educational than urban on account of its being rural. Wherever 

 we see what has been called a " rural atmosphere " studied in rural 

 education we find, on the contrary, concurrently with it, not a 

 lower, but rather a higher, standard of school teaching applied. It 

 is so in Switzerland, the country in which " ruralism " is most 

 strongly developed and most held in honour ; and it is so, pre- 

 eminently, in Denmark, the country in which rural education, 

 strongly rural as it is, has actually overtopped urban and made 

 native folk consider ourselves but " poorly educated." But let us 

 look away from these rather hackneyed instances to our own kith 

 and kin across the Atlantic. In no part of the world is at the present 

 moment the preparation of rural children for rural life studied with 

 greater care and assiduity than in the two great commonwealths 

 that divide the immense continent of North America. In these 

 two great specifically agricultural communities the value and 

 importance of distinctly rural education are, though rather late in 

 the day, at any rate now, thoroughly appreciated and understood. 

 We may therefore do well, while we find the same difficult problem 

 set to us, to fix our eyes for a moment on what is being done by 

 our cousins and kinsmen, with great energy, great devotion, firm 

 resolution, unsparing liberality, and, in its results, with good effect, 

 among them. 



" The greatest problem in American education to-day," so writes 

 the United States Bureau of Education, " is the rural schools 

 problem." And, proportionate to the importance attributed to it 

 is the attention devoted to its solution. I have not a similar pro- 



