178 
Tht RURAL NEW-YORKER 
February 2, 1924 
Hope Farm Notes 
The Battle for the Rural School 
Part II. 
What he said the “deestrict” might do 
was music to my ears. Once an. the eve 
of a school mutiny he came into the 
schoolhouse and solemnly handed me a 
bundle of hickory sticks about as large as 
a policeman’s club. He got me a new 
blackboard and other fixtures, and he 
stood like a rock throwing its shadow in 
a weary land. My conviction is that it 
doesn’t make as much difference to^ the 
country school district who is State 
School Commissioner or Governor or even 
President, as it does who is elected school 
trustee! Mark Twain is credited with 
the irreverent remark that after long 
practice in making idiots, the average 
school board was compounded. The ablest 
man or woman in the district should be 
made trustee, and supported by the peo¬ 
ple, just as they would support some 
great political or industrial leader. 
I got through my four months and took 
about $90 back to college. This, with 
what I earned at farm work, carried me 
through the term. And the school board 
gave me a “recommend,” in which they 
said: 
“He taught a good school. We can rec¬ 
ommend him as a young men fully capa¬ 
ble of handling all the big boys who make 
trouble at school, and also resisting the 
blandishment of the big girls!” . 
My friend, the trustee, put in those big 
words, and the others all signed. No 
“scientific groundwork” in all this, hut I 
valued that paper! 
* * * * * 
Then, a few years later, I found myself 
stranded in a little Southern town in the 
dead of Winter. “Dead” in that section 
does not mean ice and snow, but thick 
and deep mud in which your spirits sink 
along with your feet. I had lost my job, 
and industrial life in that section usually 
crawls into a hole in Winter and lives 
like a woodchuck until Spring. At that 
moment a vacancy occurred in the fac¬ 
ulty of a “Female Institute” located in 
the town. The principal, a retired Bap¬ 
tist minister, was in great trouble. He 
must have a new teacher, but never before 
had any young man been permitted to in¬ 
struct his young women. He finally took 
a chance on me, and I was known in the 
catalogue as “Professor of elocution, 
English, literature and modern langu¬ 
ages !” A well-sounding title, that; per¬ 
haps it will impress our friend B. S. T. 
As for myself, I know very well that the 
signboard does not fully describe the 
goods offered for sale. I once put up at a 
country hotel where a great sign an¬ 
nounced “Sweet Rest for Man and 
Beast.’” I will guarantee there was no 
rest for me, and through the night I 
heard the horse kicking out in the barn. 
That catalogue might be offered as evi¬ 
dence. but I know that “scientific ground¬ 
work” did not get very far in tea thing a 
group of lively and inquisitive young 
women. It was more a case of human 
nature well bridled with a curb b t. One 
thing is sure; I tried to teach those young 
women to read aloud, clearly and dis¬ 
tinctly, for that seems to me sadly neg¬ 
lected in our modern school training. I 
was not permitted to teach United States 
history, because the principal felt that all 
histories up to that time were mostly a 
form of propaganda in the interest of the 
North! I was paid $35 a month, and 
had to take part of that in school war¬ 
rants, which I finally cashed in at 50 per 
cent! I could tell some stories about life 
on the inside of a “Female Institute,” 
for a young man in such a position runs 
upon some rather embarrassing situa¬ 
tions, but all this would not give me any 
better standing as an educator, and so I 
must admit that B. S. T. is about right. 
***** 
Why, then, do I take any position in 
this school question? What business has 
a man who must confess that he is not 
even a successful teacher to rush in where 
educational angels claim to have a mon¬ 
opoly of the land? Well, I have helped 
raise quite a number of children. I have 
seen a good many years go by. I want to 
seb good, sound, sturdy character in the 
next generation, and 1 am frank to say 
that I believe some of the educational ex¬ 
perts are wrong in their plans for hand¬ 
ling and stuffing children. I do not like 
all these experiments with youth. In my 
own youth most of our shoes and cloth¬ 
ing and other necessities were hand¬ 
made. The goods were well produced, and 
the making gave employment to country 
people, who worked singly or in little 
groups. I have seen, as the years passed 
on. all this changed by the development 
of factory-made goods. This has con¬ 
centrated population and income in the 
towns and cities. It may have given us 
greater polish and greater material com¬ 
forts, but by taking labor and business 
from the little country units it has served 
to destroy or cripple what I shall always 
think was the most vital force in Ameri¬ 
can democracy. That is the ( old inde¬ 
pendent spirit of the old-time' American 
farmer. I have talked with men who 
rank high as historians and statesmen, 
and they admit in private that this sud¬ 
den rush from the old-time system of 
country hand-made goods to the modern 
centralized factory system of machine- 
made products is in truth the worst thing 
that could have happened to the country. 
In the craze to change from an agricul¬ 
tural to a manufacturing nation we have 
gained in pride, polish and bluster, but 
we have lost in solid self-control and law- 
abiding patriotism, and lost several im¬ 
portant letters out of the word Ameri¬ 
canism. For I go so far as to say that 
manv of these things we have lost are es¬ 
sentially country-made. They cannot be 
made or held in city civilization. I think 
it is the plan of the experts and educators 
to attempt to urbanize the old-time dis¬ 
trict school education. I believe their 
success in this would be even more disas¬ 
trous than the success of. the industrial 
revolution we have passed through. To 
me the most melancholy thing about it all 
is the evident fact that these educators 
cannot learn any application from his¬ 
tory, but simply itch to substitute ma¬ 
chine-made education for the homemade 
brand. 
***** 
I have a friend who says that the path 
of education is scattered armpit deep with 
discarded fads and experiments in school¬ 
ing. For example, I know some people 
whose handwriting has been ruined for all 
practical purposes because they happened 
to attend school while some new “system” 
of teaching writing was being tried out. 
The system failed and was abandoned, but 
not until thousands of children had ac¬ 
quired the habit of making hens’ tracks 
on paper—tracks neither beautiful nor 
legible. Every now and then these edu¬ 
cational experts start in with some new 
experiment which they try to force upon 
the people. It is said that at Albany, 
Trenton and other State capitals the most 
powerful political lobbies which members 
of the Legislature have to face are those 
working for teachers and educators. I 
make the distinction in name because the 
teacher is usually a practical person, 
while the educator is usually very strong 
on theory. Run your eye over the chil¬ 
dren of most educators if you want to see 
what theory will do for a healthy child. 
As a rule the organizations of teachers 
are so strong and active that they will, in 
time, get anything they demand in the 
way of increased pay, shorter hours or 
extra conveniences. The educators, work¬ 
ing with the teachers, can generally force 
what they want, whether it is practical 
or not. About one man in five in the 
average Legislature desires, first of all, 
to be of real service to the people. The 
other four rarely read the bills which 
come before them. They are guided by 
the views of the majority. They work for 
their own interests, for their district and 
for the party. When the teachers and 
educators come with a bluff and a big dis¬ 
play of power and there is no organized 
opposition, these men are inclined to give 
what is called for, provided it does not 
cost so much that the party will be dis¬ 
credited as extravagant. A few earnest 
men try to judge such things carefully, 
but school legislation has been mostly 
one-sided, because few have ever thought 
it wise or politically healthy to stand for 
the rights of the plain, unorganized 
Therefore I say very frankly that I 
came into this discussion because I feel 
that the country people have rights which 
they must not surrender. Unless they are 
aroused and organized these rights will 
be taken from them. The educators may 
say that I am not qualified by training ox- 
experience to discuss the school bill, but I 
have at least lived long enough to under¬ 
stand something of the long struggle 
which has from the beginning of civiliza¬ 
tion gone on between the rich, the soldier 
or the educated classes, and the unorgan¬ 
ized plain people who do most of the work 
and carry most of the burdens. I think 
one reason for the success of our republic 
is its system of checks or balances—one 
department against the other. .Tames 
Bryce describes this clearly, and shows 
how this nation might have ranged off 
into something of the condition of Mexico 
or Russia had not the executive, Congress 
and the Supreme Court been given power 
to balance and control each other. In 
the development of our educational sys¬ 
tem there lias been no such balance. The 
educators and the school men generally 
have had their way, practically without 
dispute—the only limiting feature being 
the amount of money they have been able 
to obtain. Now they are reaching out for 
an even closer grip on the system through 
Federal control. The men and women 
who pay the taxes and provide the chil¬ 
dren liaVe had practically nothing to say 
about the way their children shall be 
taught, or how the system shall be man¬ 
aged. That is because there has been no 
svstem of checks or balance to regulate or 
temper the power of the educational 
classes. The only semblance of such check 
or balance left is what may be found in 
some country school districts where the 
people still have at least partial control 
over the school. I am not trying to tell 
people how to conduct their school, but I 
am doing my best to rally them for a 
final stand in defense of their district I 
want them to organize for two purposes 
—fii-st. to act as a healthy check and bal¬ 
ance on. the fads and schemes of the edu¬ 
cators and experts, and, next, to take 
greater interest in the local school and 
work out its improvement themselves. 
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