The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1903-09-22
RURAL SCHOOL LIBRARIES IN NORTH
CAROLINA
CAROLINA.%

CAROLINA
Just now when the princely donations of Mr..
Andrew Carnegie have given a new stimulus to
library building in American cities, it may be
well to turn our eyes to "the other half" the
rural half, of our population. For although I'M
til quite recently no one thought of the public
library as a possible rural institution, it has now
made an auspicuous entrance into this new held
and is evidently destined to play an important
part among the twentieth century forces-rural
mail delivery, good roads, rural telephones, etc.
that make for the uplift of American country
life.
The need of the rural library must be appar-
ent to all that are familiar with country school
methods. Reading is the magic key to all our
store-houses of intellectual wealth; it is tie
basis of all education. "The true University of
these days." says Carlyle, lis a Collection of
Books" And it is here of all points in it's cur
riculum that the country school has failed most
grievously; it has not taught the child to read,
to use books. Do not understand me to charge
that the rural school is literally and avowedly
disloyal to the first of the immortal Three RS,
for it is not. But only in the narrowest sense
does it teach -reading-reading as the mere pro-
nunciation of words and the observance of pune
tuation marks the unlovely, mechanical side of
reading. The brighter side of reading the coun-
try pupil does not get; the city pupil does.
Aided by the prescribed supplemental literature
guided by the teacher, the child of the towns
man learns to find joy in reading, learns not only
how to read, but actually learns to read, to use
books. If you know the country school as the
writer does, you know the other side of the pic
ture. You know children who live out a long
school career without learning anything of lit
erature beyond the monotonous rehearsal of dry
boundaries of foreign countries, the dates of an
cient battles, the rules of the Stock Exchange,
are regarded as matters of Importance, but the
teacher does not see that it is a greater duty to
foster a love of reading than to teach geography
or history. Or if he sees the duty and longs to
direct the child to the beauties of literature, he
is shackled by the lack of facilities for such work.
The same old readers are used year after year
no classics are studied; there is no supplemental
reading to give the spice of variety.
It is inevitable that children reared amid such
surroundings come to regard reading, not as q
luxury, but as a drudgery and grow up potential
ly, if not in the ~strictest sense, i~lliterate. "a
confess" says Thoreau somewhere in his wal
den" "that I do not make any broad distinction
between the illiterateness of any townsman who
cannot read at all and the illiterateness of hin
who has learned only to read what is for chill
dren and feeble intellects." How much narrower
= then should be distinction between "the ~illiterate
ness of him who cannot read at alp and the il
"An article prepared by the Editor Of the Progressive
Farmer for the American Monthly Review of Reviews, Sep
TENDER, 1908. Reprinted by permission.