The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1904-03-29
HOW WE MAY IMPROVE OUR COUNTRY
SCHOOLS.
.-rhe Need Of Consolidating Weak Districts.

4-4nC NCCu "a NOASOAuoNAAS wan OASSA4S|Ss
Editors Progressive Farmer:
1t is a pleasure to me to comply with your re-
quest to contribute a series of short articles on
the Improvement of our country schools. I
count it a privilege to have the opportunity of
speaking through your columns to the people
most vitality concerned about this matter. The
country schools can be improved and made ade-
quate to the proper education of the country
people only through the cooperative efforts of
the people that dwell in the rural districts.
just as the town people have made their
schools, so the country people must make theirs.
They can do this if they will. I have an abid-
ing faith in the power of our sturdy North Car
olina ~yeomanry to accomplish whatever they de-
termine. Every sincere friend of the rural
schools should appreciate the constant zeal and
kindly support and cooperation of The Progress
i've Farmer in every wise and sensible effort to
improve these schools.
THE IMPORTANCE OF RURAL ADVANCEMENT
More than 80 per cent of the population of
North Carolina is rural and agricultural. At
least nine-tenths of this rural population is and
must continue to be dependent upon the rural
public schools for education-and this in an age
when education is no longer a luxury but a neces-
sity, and when all other civilized States and
lands are providing the best possible educational
facilities for all these people. Unless we i'm
prove the country schools (the only hope of edu-
eating at least eight-tenths of our people, and
make these schools adequate to the educational
demands of the age and somewhat equal in the
educational opportunities offered to those offer
ed in the public schools of other States and
countries, a deterioration of our rural popula-
ton must inevitably result, and in the intense
moral, intellectual and commercial conflicts of
this intense age, North Carolina must fight a
losing fight with other States, the great masses
of whose population are better trained and bet
ter educated.
The real power of any State is in the many,
not in the few. No human power can calculate
the loss of power that has resulted and will
continue to result from the inadequate training
and education of eight-tenths of our population
on account of the lack of properly equipped pub
lie schools. Unless these rural public schools can
be improved and made to offer somewhat equal
educational advantages to those offered by the
town and city schools, the disastrous drains of
the best blood of the country by the towns and
cities must continue, and the time is not far
hence when there will be left in the country
only a peasant population too Indifferent and
ignorant to appreciate the value and necessity
of education, or too hopeless and ambitionless
to go elsewhere to seek it. No greater calamity
than this can befall any people.
Every lover of his State, therefore, must feel
keenly the exceeding importance of preserving
and developing the rural population and the
necessity of making the rural schools adequate
to the part they must play in this great work.
The strength of our State must be measured by
the strength of eight-tenths of our population.
Every good citizen, therefore, and especially ev-
ery good citizen dwelling in the country, ought to
be willing to cooperate heartily with every rea-