THE COUNTRY SCHOOL 351 



THE SPREAD OF THE SCHOOL MANSE IDEA 1 



GEORGE E. VINCENT 



THE older countries of Europe have long recognized that the 

 proper housing of teachers is as much a duty of school authori- 

 ties as the provision of class rooms, laboratories and gymnasia. 

 In Denmark every rural school has its teachers' house with 

 kitchen garden and flower garden. The schoolmaster and his 

 assistants live on the school grounds. The institution is not a 

 place deserted for all but a few hours in the day; it is rather 

 a permanent residence of community leaders. Little wonder that 

 the Denmark schoolmaster holds his place year after year. It is 

 not unusual for a principal to devote his whole life to one or two 

 communities. Throughout Germany practically the same system 

 prevails with the same results in educational efficiency and com- 

 munity leadership. In France every rural teacher is provided 

 at public expense with living quarters. The same system is well 

 established and is spreading in Sweden, Norway and Finland. 



In various parts of the United States significant experiments 

 in providing houses for teachers have been made. In Hawaii 

 one-third of the schools have cottages built at public expense. 

 In the state of Washington notable progress has been made in 

 furnishing living quarters for teachers. North Dakota has 

 twenty-two schools equipped in this way. Mississippi, North 

 Carolina, Illinois, Tennessee and Oklahoma have made promis- 

 ing experiments. In St. Louis County, Minnesota, twenty-five 

 rural school teachers live, in groups of two and three, in cottages 

 built and completely furnished at public expense. 



A teachers' house or school manse is peculiarly necessary to 

 the success of the consolidated rural school which, it is now 

 agreed, is to be the typical country school of the future. There 

 should be built, in connection with the consolidated school on the 

 same grounds with the school building and heated by the same 

 plant, a permanent house for the use of the teaching staff. This 

 building should contain a wholly separate apartment for 

 the principal and his family, living room and bed-rooms for the 



i Adapted from Annul H f I lie American Academy of Political and Racial 

 Science, Vol. G7: 167- 1 ('!>, I!M!5. 



