Clinch Valley news. [volume] (Jeffersonville, Va.) 18??-2019, 1911-05-19
| M P R 0 Y ED
RURAL SCHOOLS

necessities of school life, to sa,
nothing of its comforts and conven.
fences. Strange as it may seem.
most of these deplorable school condi.
tions are found in the richest agricul.
tural sections of the State, namely,
the Shenandoah Valley and Southwest
Virginia.
This lack of improvement is moi
due to causes evident at first sight.
1t is not on account of poverty. foi
here is an instance where the wealth
lest and most prosperous sections OF
the State are most culpable. 1t is
not due to lack of appreciation OF
the element of beauty, comfort and
convenience, for the homes of the val
ley and Southwest are conspicuous for
these features. The cause seems to be
in the failure of the people in these
two sections of the State to see the
Importance of comfort and beauty and
brightens in the school environment as
we'll as in the home.
On recent tour through the State
l have been impressed with the bleak
ness, the baroness and the crudeness
of many of the rural school buildings
and ground in the most prosperous
sections of the Valley and Southwest
Virginia, and find that the town and
vi
many instances. On the other hand
the Middle and Tidewater sections of
the State are simply doing wonders
in the Improvement of their school
facilities. Everywhere in all the
counties of this section we find beau
tiful large centralized school build
ings recently erected Buildings
mostly of brick and stone, with mod
ern heating and water appliances,
large, light and any rooms, beautiful
ly furnished and equipped with mod
ern furniture, and other apparatus,
large auditoriums, libraries and fire.
quently gymnasium and domestic
science departments. Most of them
having High School facilities, with
full four years course of study. These
buildings are costing from SIS, 900 to
$50, 600 each, and the people are
clamoring for more of them, although
some forty or fifty have been erected
in the past few years.
These high class schools are doing
more to arouse the residents of the
community to the vast opportunities
that lie before them than anything
else and as direct result they are
improving their roads and their
streets, their towns, their cities, and
their farms, and in consequence this
eastern half of Virginia is fast be-
coming most attractive and prosper
GUS section of the State.
What Virginia needs most of all is
plenty of good high class settlers to
put their lands under cultivation and
increase the agricultural production
and general prosperity. Middle and
Eastern Virginia are getting the bulk
of these people because of their pro-
gressive policy in these matters of
and general up-building
of the community. Not only this, but
in the past two or three years large
number of the former residents of
the Valley and Southwest are selling
their old homes and buying these old
Eastern Virginia plantations, where
they get better school facilities in
rapidly developing community with
land at less than half the price they
sold theirs for.
There are more of these high grade
centralized Rural schools visible from
the railroad in the eighty-two miles
from Petersburg to Norfolk than in
the two hundred and fifty miles from
Roanoke, to Hagerstcwn, Md; this
statement is not made for invidious
comparison, but simply with the OBJ
ject in view of acquainting our peo-
pie of the Western part of the State
with the fact that they are marking
time while their neighbors at the
East are advancing at double quick
anu VIII SOOn OuL-Q .SLdnCe Lnem en-
tirely, if they don't get in line and
do likewise.
Start school improvement cam
paign in your own community and
then call on State Superintendent of
Schools. Jas. D. Eggleston, at Rich
mond, Va. If you are in earnest he
will tell you how you can get one of
these modern up-to-date buildings in
your locality and it will be absolutely
the best investment you and your
friends ever made.
There is no reason why farmers and
others living in 500 land belt
should be satisfied with antiquated old
buildings and inadequate school facil-
tiles that have almost entirely disap-
peared in the $40 to $40 land belt of
the State where people will not long
er put up with these back number
conditions. The illiteracy of Virginia