Educational Opporf unity on the Farm 51 



the time require that youth should be trained to 

 become practical, energetic men, and not public 

 functionaries or pure men of letters, who know 

 life only from what they learn in books. M. De- 

 molins has personally studied with care some 

 prominent English schools. In these he found the 

 school buildings, not as in France, immense struc- 

 tures with the aspect of a barrack or a prison, but 

 the pupils were distributed among cottages, in 

 which efforts were made to give the place the ap- 

 pearance of a home. They were not surrounded by 

 high walls, but there was an abundance of air and 

 light and space and verdure. In place of the 

 odious refectories of the French colleges, the dining- 

 room was like that of a family, and the professors 

 and director of the school, with his wife and 

 daughters, sat at table with the pupils."* 



Here is seen the beginning of better methods 

 in primary education. In the rural districts of 

 America, this system needs but little modifica- 

 tion to fit it to the rural home. All else must 

 yield to the inborn rights of the children. If 

 that Brussels carpet which adorns the dark and 

 unused parlor must be pulled up and some of 

 the worst pictures relegated to the garret, in 

 order that provision for a school -room for the 

 children of the family or for those of the im- 

 mediate neighborhood may be made, then pull 



* Editorial. " Literary Digest," July 2, 1898. 



