THE NATION'S PRIDE 



60; 



standards ; and it is these that we can 

 reveal. It is these that we should find 

 and place in service, rather than force 

 the disconnected schools of the land to 

 feel their way out or "muddle through." 

 We may not command, but we may "show 

 how." This is democracy's substitute for 

 absolutism in the effort to secure effi- 

 ciency. 



For such policy of helpfulness there is 

 abundant precedent, not only in the ac- 

 tion of Congress in making minor appro- 

 priations for the work of the Bureau of 

 Education on precisely these lines, but in 

 the activities of other departments. 



The country is dotted with experimental 

 farms, which prove soil values, and the 

 farmer of today is learning from the 

 government how great and all-embracing 

 must be the knowledge necessary to the 

 carrying on of his work; for he must 

 know of chemistry, mechanics, markets 

 and finance, transportation, and a world 

 of things which his father or grandfather 

 would have laughed at as the frills of a 

 doctrinaire education, notwithstanding 

 the early example of the wise and many- 

 sided farmer who was the first President 

 of this country. 



As in the Bureau of Mines, we seek to 

 save the lives of miners by educating 

 them in the use of explosives and life- 

 saving apparatus, and by instructing op- 

 erators in safe methods of building their 

 vast underground workshops, so I would 

 erect the Bureau of Education into a Bu- 

 reau of Educational Methods and Stand- 

 ards in which would be gathered the ripe 

 fruit of all educational experiments upon 

 which the schools of the country could 

 draw. This is a wide country, and there 

 is need for a national clearing - house 

 where can be centered and exchanged the 

 results of the most remote experiments. 



XO MORE MODERN THAN A WOODEN PLOW 



There is no disguising the fact that we 

 have a most difficult problem in the 

 United States — and I cannot believe it is 

 ours alone — in the rural community. A 

 majority of our school children are in 

 rural schools. The query arises : Are our 

 rural schools doing their part in making 

 life in the country desirable? An am- 

 bitious people will go where education 

 can be had for their children. There is 



no sense _ in talking of the charms of 

 country life and the independence and 

 dignity of producing from the soil if the 

 school at command is no more modern 

 than a wooden plow. 



The old-fashioned one-room school- 

 house which holds 40 or 50 ungraded pu- 

 pils, having but a single teacher, who 

 knows nothing but books, is not a modern 

 institution, though great men have issued 

 from its door. It may be all that the 

 county can afford where many schools 

 are maintained, but it is not all that the 

 county can afford if schools are grouped 

 and grades instituted. 



The richest State in the Union has over 

 4,000 schools of this character, wherein 

 the teachers are paid less than competent 

 farm hands ; and this brings to mind the 

 correlative thought that one needed re- 

 form in the school system is in the eleva- 

 tion of teaching into a real profession, as 

 in older countries. As it is now, a teacher 

 is almost without status in our society. 



How can the schools of a county be so 

 coordinated and combined as to make 

 them efficient tools ? What should be the 

 standard for a teacher's qualifications? 

 How may children be brought to and 

 taken from the school to distant homes 

 at the least expense? To what extent 

 should the teaching be out-of-doors and 

 the "examples" those of real life? 



How can the boy learn that there is ad- 

 venture in farm life as well as in the 

 city? — for adventure he will have. To 

 what uses may the school building be put 

 as a community center for the neighbor- 

 hood dance, lecture, or moving-picture 

 show, or, perhaps, as the home of a co- 

 operative buying or marketing organiza- 

 tion? 



These are but a few of the questions 

 which many men have tried to answer, 

 and there have been some successful ex- 

 periments made and right answers given. 



A RURAL REVOLUTION 



But it is as hopeless a task for a local 

 school board to find these answers as for 

 a lawyer to know the decisions of all the 

 courts. The teachers, the superintend- 

 ents, and the school boards need leader- 

 ship ; they need an authoritative state- 

 ment of conclusions by the wisest and 

 most practical men in the land ; they need 



