366 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



culties of rural-school teaching. The right man or the right 

 woman in this office may become a real leader in the community, 

 knowing its people intimately and sympathetically. Under his 

 or her tactful direction, the schoolhouse may become a true com- 

 munity center, enriching the social life with a round of whole- 

 some activities. It would be hard indeed to overestimate what 

 two hundred thousand mature, well trained, and permanently 

 employed teachers in these small schools would mean both to 

 rural America and to the nation as a whole. They could do for 

 America and American democracy what the village dominies 

 have done for Scotland and what the rural schoolmasters have 

 done for Denmark and Norway. They could make these lonely 

 outposts of culture what they should be, strategic centers of na- 

 tional strength and national idealism for outposts though they 

 may be in one sense, in another and a deeper sense these little 

 schools, of all our educational institutions, are closest to what is 

 formative and virile and abiding in our national life. 



The urban centers are not wholly blameless for this neglect 

 of the rural school. They have required in general higher 

 standards of maturity and preparation for their teachers, but 

 they have fallen far short of recognizing public-school service as 

 a worthy profession or of setting a standard of recognition and 

 rewards that might well have had a stimulating effect upon the 

 outlying rural districts. By limiting its teaching-appointments 

 especially in the elementary schools to young women living with 

 their parents in the home community, the typical American city 

 has been able to recruit its teachers at the smallest possible wage. 

 The effect of this upon the development of a true professional 

 spirit among the teachers can be readily conjectured. It has 

 kept the standards of professional preparation deplorably low, 

 it has encouraged young women to enter the work of teaching 

 merely as a temporary occupation, and in many cases it has led 

 the public to look upon teaching-appointments, not as positions 

 of trust and honor, but as jobs to be distributed, either to the 

 deserving poor or to those who can enlist "influence" in their 

 behalf. 



Again it is beside the point to say that there are communities 

 that have risen far beyond this primitive estimate of the teacher's 

 work. There are man}' such communities, it is true, but their 



