PROBLEMS OF RURAL SCHOOLS 489 



schools are able to attract and to hold a better teaching force, not only 

 because of higher salaries, but because of better living and social 

 opportunities. 



However, wliile it is possible to secure for consolidated schools 

 trained teachers who are able to carry out a course of study such as is 

 found in our city schools, at the present time there is a dearth of teachers 

 who know anything about the country schools or who have been trained 

 for the special purpose of teaching in these schools. Normal schools ful- 

 fill but half their mission if they neglect the rural schools. They are 

 fast waking up and endeavoring to supply the need, as is evidenced by 

 the fact that nearly all the 1912 circulars contain offers of work in 

 agriculture and instruction for rural teachers. Terre Haute, Macomb, 

 Kirksville, Hays and a few other western normals have established 

 model rural training schools. Certainly normal schools and agricul- 

 tural colleges should keep in touch with country schools through system- 

 atic visitation, and this is being done in some states. When Minnesota 

 offered grants for efficient rural school work she wisely offered bonuses 

 to higher institutions for the establishment of departments of manual 

 training and agriculture. Not only normal, but high schools and some 

 fifty others come under this provision. A Minnesota educator writes 

 that some of this work is being wretchedly done and the money wasted, 

 but it must be borne in mind that the pedagogy of the rural school is 

 still in its infancy and blunders are bound to be made. Wisconsin has 

 a system of county training classes, and other states have established 

 such classes in connection with high schools, but what should be the 

 character of the rural school curriculum is still very problematic. At 

 the present time there is a very strong feeling that nature study, school 

 gardening, elementary agriculture, domestic science and manual train- 

 ing should be a vital part of the country school curriculum. In Europe 

 the school garden originated with the rural school, and as early as 1814 

 it was to be found in Germany. Practically all northern European 

 countries with the exception of England require school gardening or ele- 

 mentary agriculture to be taught in the country schools. Certainly a 

 policy that has been pursued for so many years in industrial Europe 

 merits attention here. In this country, on the contrary, the school 

 garden movement developed in the city. At the present time about ten 

 states require elementary agriculture to be taught in the rural schools, 

 and teachers to pass examinations in the subject. These states are 

 mostly in the south. 



It would seem that the establishment of rural school libraries would 

 have been one of the earliest and easiest steps to have been taken for the 

 betterment of these schools, but practically little has been accomplished. 

 Few York boasts of a library for every school. Ohio has a large travel- 

 ing one. Minnesota encourages the establishment of libraries by the 



