THE EXPERIENCES OF A 

 MAN WHO HAS BEEN 

 A SCHOOL DIREGOR 

 FOR 25 YEARS 



ri LOVE OUR 



By LEO M. KNOX, Whiteside County 



EVEN though I have been school 

 director for more than 23 years, 

 I am not too proud of the things 

 that I have done to improve our educa- 

 tional system. I am not ashamed of 

 what I have done or perhaps I should 

 say what we have done, but I am a 

 little bit ashamed of what we have not 

 done. 



It is true that several years ago the 

 folks in our district worked together 

 in putting a basement under the old 

 school building, now over 80 years old, 

 and in installing a furnace. A few 

 years later we had a well drilled so as 

 to do away with the necessity of the 

 pupils carrying drinking water from 

 the neighbors in an open pail. We 

 also purchased some new desks and 

 wired the old school building for elec- 

 tricity. Oh, yes! We purchased at one 

 time a nice set of encyclopedia which 

 seldom if ever is used and now and 

 then a high powered salesman has im- 

 pressed upon us the fact that our maps 

 were sadly out of date and so we in- 

 vested a few dollars there. Most of 

 the improvements, however, have been 

 made because of our desire to be rated 

 as a "Standard School" and we tried to 

 meet the requirements. These require- 

 ments, however, have not been very 

 high. 



Parents having children in our 

 school have usually turned out 

 pretty well for Chirstmas pro- 

 grams, but when it comes to the 

 annual elections, the folks in our 

 • district have been very passive; in 

 fact, sometimes we have had 

 barely enough voters present to 

 conduct the business at hand. 

 Let us briefly examine some of these 

 things. Why is it that rural people 

 have not displayed more interest in the 

 annual elections? In my opinion, the 

 poor attendance at the annual school 

 elections, is not due entirely to the 

 lack of interest. Our school elections 

 are held in April when farm people 

 are extraordinarily busy in the fields 

 and the meetings are usually held in 



8 



the evening, when everyone is tired. 

 Futhermore, unless there is a contro- 

 versy about some matter or some per- 

 son running for office, these elections 

 are very dry affairs. A short financial 

 report — the balloting for the office 

 of director, which usually nobody 

 wants — the meeting adjourns and we 

 go home. That is the way things have 

 worked in our district. Probably some 

 of you have carried on your elections 

 by giving reports and having discus- 

 sions that indicate that you have really 

 tried to determine how your school 

 conditions might be improved. 



I think that I can also give some 

 reasons for so many farm people 

 "seeing red" when someone men- 

 tions the word, "consolidation", 

 or suggests changes in our schools. 

 In the first place, many of us have 

 known of so-called consolidated 

 districts in other states where the 

 school taxes are reported outra- 

 geously high and where the rural 

 pupils have been transported to 

 urban centers. We have a fear of 

 the control in our schools being 

 taken away from us. This fear is 

 somewhat justified because many 

 times over the years, certain 

 groups and special interests have 

 tried to reorganize rural schools 

 from the top down. 



In Illinois, our own Illinois Agri- 

 cultural Association has many times 

 thrown its weight against enforced 

 consolidation and the transfer of con- 

 trol from the people to some central- 

 ized authority. The time is here, how- 

 ever, when a goodly number of rural 

 people, in every part of the state, have 

 come to realize that our rural schools 

 have not progressed as fast as have 

 some of our urban schools or kept pace 

 with progress along other lines. They 

 feel that rural boys and girls have a 

 perfect right to have the best education 

 possible. It appears that in some 

 states, such as New York, Wisconsin 

 and Indiana, the reorganization of 

 rural schools has come from the top. 



It is my firm belief that whatever 

 changes are made in rural schools 

 should be done with the consent of the 

 farm people. 



To be fair to our boys and girls so 

 as to be sure that they secure educa- 

 tional opportunities equal to that of 

 others, we should not postpone 

 making a serious study of our pres- 

 ent school conditions. I am sure 

 that changes are going to come. I 

 would like to have these changes di- 

 rected by farm people. I am sure that 

 if farm people study all sides of this 

 question they will not come out with 

 a stupid answer. I am sure also that 

 any study of schools by farm people 

 should be mixed with the advice and 

 counsel of our educators. I have 

 noticed a tendency of farm people to 

 be-little the advice of those who have 

 been closest to the problems. I think 

 that we must listen to all sides of the 

 questions and then make our own deci- 

 sions. We shouldn't let selfishness or 

 false pride or prejudice warp our 

 thinking. 



During the last several years I have 

 been doing considerable work on 

 school matters with the public relations 

 committee of the Illinois Agricultural 

 Association and on a state-wide Farm 

 Bureau committee, and I have learned 

 why the situations in some of the rural 

 districts in Illinois have become quite 

 serious. 



The roost important of these is 

 the fact that our school popula- 

 tion has decreased treimendously. 

 For instance, in my own school 

 district there were from 50 to 60 

 pupils attending school during the 

 winter months when my father 

 went to school. When I was at- 

 tending school in our district, 

 there were from 20 to 30 pupils. 

 When my wife taught school in 

 our district, she had 22 pupils dur- 

 ing the first year. For the last 

 several years, we have had an aver- 

 age of about 10 or 11. Next year, 

 there will be six, and unless some 



I. A. A. RECORD 



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