Reaching and Training Rural Teachers 



E. Lawrence Palmer 



Cornell Univci-sity 

 New Syllabus in Nature-Study, Humaneness and Elementary Agriculture, for 



Rural Schools 



A plan of study which may be followed in a system of schools in 

 a city many times is not practical in a one room rural school. 

 There are many reasons for this. Aside from the fact that the 

 same material is not always easily available there is really no reason 

 why a plan of study which can be put into practice in a rural school 

 should not prove satisfactory in a city school system. For these 

 reasons, it would seem best that any plan of study which is to be 

 more or less uniformly followed throughout a state should keep the 

 problems of the rural teacher in mind at all times. In the past, 

 this practice has not always been observed and consequently sug- 

 gestions which were intended to make the task of the rural teacher 

 lighter have occasionally done the opposite by presenting problems 

 which complicate rather than simplify the duties of that already 

 sufficiently burdened teacher. 



A rural school teacher's school consists of children of varied 

 degrees of maturity and preparation. A city teacher's school con- 

 sists of a selected group of children with a more or less uniform 

 preparation. It is obviously, then, easier for the city teacher to 

 plan and prepare the work of the school than for the rural teacher 

 to do this. If the rural teacher can plan the work so that all of the 

 pupils may be kept busy at the same time on a given subject so 

 much the better. If but one preparation is necessary to care for 

 the needs of eight different grades at once then the proposition is 

 better yet. • The present article is an attempt to so simplify and 

 organize the sources of information available to rural teachers that 

 nature-study may practically take care of itself. 



An ideal nature-study lesson might be one based on anything of 

 interest found on a trip or brought into school by any child. Few 

 teachers could give a real lesson under the circumstances which 

 would arise following a practice of this sort at the present time. 

 With the help of this outline, this ideal may possibly be more 

 nearly approached than has been convenient in the past. 



One lesson gives us but a meager idea of the possibilities of any 

 branch of learning and in order to best appreciate the subject in 

 question we should approach it from many angles. For tliis reason 



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