New School-houses Needed 163 



room or wing were added to every rural 

 school-house to which children could take 

 their collections or in which they could do 

 work with their hands, it would start a revo- 

 lution in the ideals of country-school teaching 

 even with our present school teachers. Such a 

 room would challenge every person in the 

 community. They would want to know what 

 relation hand-training and nature-study and 

 similar activities bear to teaching. Such a 

 room would ask a hundred questions every 

 day. The teacher could not refuse to try to 

 answer them. 



The problem of the rural school is not so 

 much one of subjects as of methods of teach- 

 ing. The best part of any school is its spirit : 

 I can conceive of a school in which no agricul- 

 ture is taught as a separate, which will still pre- 

 sent the subject vitally from day to day by 

 means of the customary studies and exercises. 

 The agricultural colleges, for example, have 

 all along made the mistake of trying to make 

 farmers of their students by compelling them 

 to take certain "practical" courses, forgetting 



