134 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
January 20, 192-1 
The Battle for the Rural School 
Part I 
This Hope Farm man's remarks on ed¬ 
ucation are quite amusing. What does 
he know about education, anyway V lie 
does not seem to be a highly educated 
person himself. He certainly is not what 
I call an educator. lie does not seem to 
have any groundwork of schooling or any 
scientific knowledge of teaching. I be¬ 
lieve that .what the experts on education 
tell us must be correct aiul their advice 
should be followed. This man is an out¬ 
law and rebel in education matters; be 
should not be permitted to spread Ins 
harmful doctrines. B. S. T. 
Well, there you have it; a sample ot 
what I am getting from some of these 
educators. I imagine much of it is true. 
One man is kind enough to say 1 am t he 
Abraham Lincoln of the people who be¬ 
lieve in the local school. Another calls 
me the Benedict Arnold of the educated 
classes. The first statement strikes me as 
hard on Lincoln. I hope the latter is 
complimentary to Arnold. At any rate, all 
this seems clear evidence of the tremend¬ 
ous conflict now raging over the eduea- 
tion of country children. On one side ve 
have a well-trained army of educators, up- 
lifters, school officers and people with pos¬ 
sibly more vision than practical sense, 
who believe in government by classes; 
that is, thev think the experts and school 
officials should have full power over the 
schools and the pupils so that their scien¬ 
tific methods may be enforced. Back ot 
this armv, in the shadow, there is a silent 
group of politicians who have long seen 
possibilities for plying their trade in an 
arbitrary school system with money 
enough in it to make a few more political 
plums. These experts may not admit it, 
and perhaps they do not know it, bu 
their plans will tend more and more to 
centralization and the separation as far 
as possible of the child from home 
and parental influence. On the othei 
hand are the plain, hard-working men 
and women, unorganized and often with¬ 
out trained school_ education, who hate 
the instinctive feeling that all this con¬ 
centration or expfl't training will take 
their children further and further away 
from them. # * * * 
The experts and the school men repre¬ 
sent in this contest something ot what 
Alexander Hamilton did at the time this 
nation was organized. Hamilton was an 
aristocrat. He had a contempt for the 
plain, or common people, and did not c n 
skier them capable of self-government or 
even capable of giving advice or making 
plans in their own affairs, lie did 
best to organize a government of the 
strong, the rich and' the educated, the 
rest of the people to be treated like large 
children, and given, not what instinct told 
them was necessary, but what Hie upper 
classes thought they needed Ihe ex¬ 
perts and the school men will piobably 
deny it. but in their handling of the school 
question they are coming more and more 
to represent the arbitrary policy of Ham¬ 
ilton. and it must be admitted that they 
have so perfected their organization, and 
so completely dazed the mind ot the or¬ 
dinary town and city parent as to what 
the child’s education should be, that thej 
have pretty nearly acquired a monopoly 
of education. Only in parts of the coun¬ 
try where some of the old-faslnoiied ideas 
of education remain, are the plain people 
left with any real control over the school. 
However well disguised it may be. the 
foundation of all this effort to improve 
the rural schools is based on the idea ot 
. forcing the plan of town education upon 
country people, and incidentally seeming 
both educational and political control ot 
the rural districts. It may be that B. b. 
T is right, and that I am ‘‘an outlaw 1 and 
a rebel.” but I sincerely doubt any great 
altruistic attitude on the part of these re¬ 
formers. I have found their organizations 
very keen in working for larger salaries, 
larger appropriations and more educa¬ 
tional and political jobs. 
***** 
1 If Hamilton stood at one extreme of 
political thought. Lincoln stood at the 
other in his belief in the ability and pow¬ 
er of the common, “uneducated,” people 
to know what is best for them and for 
their children. The farmers who are 
now fighting to preserve the integrity of 
their local schools represent, in this 
school conflict, the people whom Lincoln 
loved so well, and for whom he stood. I 
have talked with hundreds of men who 
live in town and city about their children 
and schooling. These men are powerless, 
and they realize it. They pay taxes, and 
are told of the “wonderful school system,” 
but in their hearts they vaguely question 
what all this expensive and showy train¬ 
ing is really doing for their children. 
They go back to their own school days 
and realize how only the essential things 
have ever remained with them. Now and 
then they go to some school entertainment 
and wonder what it is all about, and what 
these prematurely old children are going 
to do in the future. If they knew how to 
express themselves, a majority of these 
plain, hard-working men would say that 
much of this modern education is doing 
their children more harm than good, but 
thev are told that it is the highest de¬ 
velopment of the best expert minds—and 
what can a plain man say to that? It is 
the instinct of the plain countryman 
which prompts him to fight for liis local 
school. Some of them have sent their 
children to town school—and lost them— 
as I shall try to explain later. They 
feel that the local school control is the 
last of their public rights which has been 
left in their hands. One by one prac¬ 
tically every other political right has been 
taken away from them. Just as soon as 
these rights became valuable politically, 
just as soon as there was a little money 
in the jobs which it provided, some greedy 
organization or party scooped them all 
to provide places for the great army of 
white-collar gentry who must be provided 
for. Who can blame these plain men and 
women for suspecting that all this ellort 
to gain control of the rural school system 
is another raid into the last remaining 
field to secure another crop of political 
jobs? The well-meaning men and women 
who are trying to force new laws and 
new methods upon these people will indig¬ 
nantly deny any such intention—but who 
can blame these farmers for being sus¬ 
picious, in view of what has happened to 
them before? The wonder to me is that 
the experts and educators have not recog¬ 
nized the foundation reason for this op¬ 
position to their plans. They call it ob¬ 
stinacy, prejudice, or brutal ignorance, 
when in reality it is. at heart, a patriotic 
determination to defend a political right 
and a needed public institution. Thus 
the modern conflict over the country 
school is essentially the old battle be¬ 
tween the spirits of Hamilton and Lin¬ 
coln. I shall try to show later why I 
stand for the district school and its im¬ 
provement by the local patrons. 
% He # ♦ 
But B. S. T. says my remarks are 
amusing. Good! I am glad to have 
given him a little pleasure. His note in¬ 
dicates to me a somewhat sour disposi¬ 
tion. Laughter is to a sour mind like 
lime to a sour soil. I am glad to supply 
a little mental lime. I surely am not an 
educator, though perhaps I ought to be 
if there is anything in pedigree or en¬ 
vironment. My mother was a teacher 
and so was my mother-in-law. I have 
two sisters and a brother, all successful 
teachers. I married a teacher, and my 
daughter has taught. I have a number of 
cousins who have been successful in the 
schoolroom, but I confess that my own 
record does not entitle me to a front seat. 
In truth, I cannot claim to be a “very 
highly educated person.” I did not have 
what I call a first-class chance. About all 
I got in the way of schooling was ob¬ 
tained at a little district school. The 
schoolhouse was not painted red. I do not 
think it was painted at all. but it was 
true to tvpe. In addition to the district 
school I had two terms, as I remember, 
in a town high school—but it was no such 
institution as the modern high school. 
That was all, for at 14 I went to work to 
support myself I went to a night school 
for a time, and I read about all the good 
books I could find. At 22, after eight 
years of self-support. I entered one of the 
old-fashioned agricultural colleges and 
worked through it. To this day I do not 
know how I ever happened to pass the 
examination, with my poor mental equip¬ 
ment. While the agricultural college of 
that day did not rank high in scholarship, 
it turned out a class of men who have 
had something to do with making Ameri¬ 
can history—more of it. I think, than 
most of the graduates of the modern col¬ 
leges will be likely to put over. Like 
many of the district schools, these col¬ 
leges were not very strong on the flour¬ 
ishes of life, but sound on the fundamen¬ 
tals. I am not, therefore, “highly edu¬ 
cated.” and never pretended to be. About 
all I know of education has been obtained 
or derived from reading. The best thing 
that ever happened to me was the fact 
that I picked up the reading habit early 
in life, and it has stuck ro me as consist- 
tently as the habit of eating or throwing 
a ball with my right hand. That being 
so. I do not much care what my children 
are taught, so long as they are thoroughly 
grounded in arithmetic and simple mathe¬ 
matics, a thorough knowledge of English 
and the power to express themselves with 
toneme or pen and the dictionary and 
reading habits developed up to the nth 
degree. I know that a good teacher in a 
district school can develop all these 
things. 
* * * * * 
B. S. T.’s charge that I have no "scien¬ 
tific knowledge of teaching” is correct. I 
plead guilty. At this public confessional 
I will tell the whole sad story of my 
teaching experience, and throw myself 
upon the mercy of the company. In my 
sophomore year at college i came to_tlie 
end of the Fall term with less than $5 in 
my pocket. There was very little Winter 
work in those days, and while I never 
pretended to be a teacher, I looked about 
for a district school. I found one far 
back from town. It had an evil reputa- 
tion. Three teachers had been “put out” 
in previous Winters. They offered me 
$25 a month and “board around,” and I 
took the job. I acted as janitor, 
policeman. fighter and peacemaker, 
and while there was no scientific 
groundwork about it. I learned more 
about the psychology of a country 
district than any of these experts 
have ever exhibited—at least to me. I 
r-ould tell many a tale about the happen- 
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The 
Company 
Atlanta, Georgia 
Agricultural IDepartment 
New York, N. Y. 
Berkeley, Cal. 
Medina, Ohio 
11 Rip CT and Rllllt 
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