PERIODICAL LITERATURE 8l 



to the task of depopulating their rural regions. They have acuteness to see 

 that if they are to drive people out of the country, they cannot begin with 

 the adult population. Life in the open country is so alluring and so natural 

 that even when it has not been made as complete as it might be, it holds 

 people fast. So these far-reaching Americans, in order to crowd people back 

 into the cities, where they obviously want them to be, have devised a cam- 

 paign of education directed toward the children. They have planned all their 

 rural schools on city models. Even in such details as arithmetic problems, they 



see to it that the children's minds should be directed toward urban life 



If this visitor were told what he interpreted as an astute campaign was a 

 mere matter of stupidity and tradition, and that the American People were 

 really wondering how they could check the congestion of cities, he would 

 be forced, out of decent respect for the people he was visiting, to be in- 

 credulous. 



How can a child born and reared in the country respect the life of the 

 farmer when the community in which he lives does not regard the farmer's 

 occupation worthy of study? How can he be expected to look with ambition 

 toward agriculture as a vocation when he finds that training for it is regarded 

 as less important than preparation for a clerkship? How can he think of 

 village and rural life as anything more than a makeshift when he finds that 

 in the schools he attends there is not a word taught concerning crops or 

 cattle or roads? 



The situation in this country is then contrasted with the 

 national policy of rural education recently inaugurated in 

 Canada and the importance of a similar movement in this country 

 suggested. The criticism of the condition in rural schools as to 

 their indifference to rural life does not go unchallenged. In a 

 later number of the same magazine appears a reply in which the 

 editor is brought to task for making implications that were not 

 warranted by the facts in the case. The work in agricultural 

 education of the Middle West is cited as a refutation. The 

 writer in a five months' visit in Canada had been unable to see 

 any reason for holding up the Canadian scheme for rural edu- 

 cation as a model for this country (116). 



Another letter of reply is published from a farmer who could 

 see no more reason why "a country child should be taught how 

 to run a farm than a city child should be taught how to run a 

 bank." 



