The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1903-02-27

his time when not visiting patients
doing farm or other work to one who
devoted his whole time TO study and
practice of his profession? Only long
years of experience have enabled a
few of our best rural teachers TO do
two things we'll.
Now, | will tell you how you can
bring about better state of things,
how you can keep the good teachers
in rural work and in the same school,
how you can prevent their spending a
part of their time and energies at
other work. Do not pay them such
high wages. They get rich too quick,
then leave for something harder, with
more responsibility and that does not
pay so well. There are actually dis
tricts in this county that for seven or
eight months pay a teacher $50 per
month, and she TO board herself
come independently rich? OF course,
she may have TO pay half of this for
board, and some more for books and
papers and institute fees 1.-THE state
does not appropriate money for teach
ers' as it does for farmers Institutes,
and of course the district requires
her 20 dress neatly and well and really
would like TO have her attend a sum-
mer school. Eighty dollars to clothe
herself well, buy books and papers,
pay her expenses TO better fit herself
for another year, and 10 lay aside for
the proverbial rainy day. Attractive,
isn't il?
Or take this man with a family de-
pendent upon him. He gets SIS 90 $50
per month for eight months, or 5000
to $3.50 for the school year. Do you
wonder that he works at farming or
something else, nights and mornings
and Saturdays? If you do, try keep
ing a family of six or eight on $40 a
year in these times.
There has been a scarcity of teach
ers all this school year; indeed, four
teachers are wanted at once, and the
commissioner is being blamed because
he does not furnish them. A man said
TO me Saturday night, eve are COM
pletely at your mercy" when as a
matter of fact they were at the mercy
of low wage conditions. They wanted
d teacher at SIS, but when they con-
scented TO pay $50, | found a teacher
who would go. Right here in Paw
Paw last fall, asked a young lady
TO take school. and after asking
what the boards would pay she said:
II can get dollar a day and board
working in grapes, and not have the
care and anxiety l would have in the
! fruit at better wages 1t pays better
70 pack grapes than it does TO train
children, probably because we are
more deeply interested in them.
l said TO young man, also here in
Paw Paw, Don't you want to take a
school at $50 per month";" His reply
was, u am getting S1.50 per day and
do not have TO dress up, or buy books,
etc. No, would rather work at day
wages And so would You, my friend,
if you had "gumption" enough to
/ each a good school.
Another need Of our rural schools is
manual training in things pertaining
to practical agriculture. Now, some
will say manual training is a fad and
we want none of it, But the fact re-
mains that a class which takes chain
or tape. goes out of doors, measures
/ the school yard, the adjoining field,
| the wood pile. school house, its walls.
/ il, floors. etc. will learn more practi-
cal knowledge Of square feet and
! IL g
etc, in one week than il could in a
month from the book problems, and
/ the answers wouldn't be in the back
| part Of the book either. With sets of
/ measures and scales, they could, by
actual measurement, learn more con-
corning these things in day than in a
week from book. But this is manual
training, that is, hand training; while
| would not depreciate the value of
subjects as now taught, / would APP
preCiate the value of teaching practi-
I cal agriculture TO the boys and girls
/ in our rural schools. Why cannot our
! problems be taken from actual meas
urements and computations of farm
acres, farm products, etc? Why can
not our physical geography treat of
/ the nature and formation of soil, its
clements the useful plants, the weeds,
1 the domestic animals of our own To-
cality as we'll as 20 dwell on the wild
animals and vegetation in general?
Why should not history treat of indus
/ trial conditions most closely allied to
agricultural interests, as we'll as TO
devote Its pages 60 wars and con-
quests? And why should not the
physiology of plants and animals, how
to improve the vitality and character
of the good, and how TO annihilate the
bad in vegetable and animal life
why should not these be taught with
special emphasis in our rural schools?
The tendency of our boys and girls
has been and still is away from the
farm, and partially, it seems TO ME,
from the lack of instruction in these
respects. Let us teach the practical
side of agriculture, its history, its
problems, its physical geography,
botany, chemistry, zoology, and the
involved physiology, and we shall Gre
ate new interest on the part of our