484 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



HOW THE PEOBLEMS OF THE EUEAL SCHOOLS AEE 



BEING MET 



By MARY A. GRUPE 



WASHINGTON STATE NOEilAL SCHOOL, ELLEXSBDBG. 



THE little red schoolhouse is all well enough as a matter of tradi- 

 tion and history. It has served its purpose and no amount of 

 sentiment for its past achievements can make it a thing acceptable to 

 the present generation. Time was when the one-room school house was 

 quite as well built and furnished as the dwellings from which the chil- 

 dren came, but that is past and there is no gainsaying that the one- 

 room district school is generally unsightly, illy ventilated and meagerly 

 equipped. Moreover, the few children, many classes, formal bookish 

 instruction, and inadequately trained teachers make it altogether un- 

 satisfactory. However, a habit dies hard even though through evolu- 

 tion the use for that habit has disappeared. Xo doubt the one-room 

 district school was and still is a necessity in some isolated and inac- 

 cessible localities, but because it got fixed as a system it still maintains 

 where conditions no longer warrant, and where it positively saps vitality 

 without bringing adequate returns. This ancestral school, once per- 

 forming an important function in New England, still persists there, 

 although, because of migrations to centers of population, it has prac- 

 tically lost its use. The district system, thus originating in New Eng- 

 land, was naturally, but unfortunately carried west and all over the 

 United States became the prevailing type. 



Heartless as it may seem to say so, the outlook for any radical im- 

 provement of the one-room school, especially under the district system, 

 appears hopeless. Poor as it is, the cost per pupil is greater than that 

 for the best city schools. The Michigan report for 1902 shows that for 

 schools averaging fewer than sLx, the cost per pupil was $99.50 each 

 year, schools of fewer than fifteen paid $41.60, while the city average 

 was $19.50. This condition is wide spread. The district system is to 

 a large degree responsible for the weaknesses of the rural schools. To 

 secure the building and equipment necessary for efficient work would 

 make the tax upon the people of such a small area as a district too 

 burdensome. The isolation and hampering conditions make it almost 

 impossible to secure well-trained teachers. Kansas tried to attract better 

 teachers by raising the salaries, but failed, for the discomfort and incon- 

 venience they must undergo of living in unheated rooms, of being forced 

 to sit with tlie families to study in the evening, and of having no con- 



