The herald and news. [volume] (Newberry S.C.) 1903-1937, 1912-09-06
THE COUNTY SCHOOL.


The school house should be the cen
tre of population. Around it the
young and the old should allow their
interests to centre and their affections
to cling. Is the school house of to-
day, in all its neatness and beauty,
as close to the hearts of the people
as was the ''old field school" where
many of our best men of today got
their start in letters through the in
tensive system, including the hickory
withe? The school house should never
be closed. 1t should always be the
place for neighborhood gatherings.
Along this line Gov. Woodrow Wilson
says:
There is one thing in which I have
been very much interested in recent
years. oYu know / used to be a
schoolnaster and the interesting
thing about the schools of the United
States is that the United States makes
so limited use of them.
For example you take our school
houses all through the country side,
standing here, there and everywhere,
in the cities, and they are closed for
the most part between the school
session of one day and the school ses-
sion of the next day. They are public
buildings. They belong to the COM
munities. They furnish ideal places
in which to assemble and discuss pub
lie affairs. They are just what we
need for neighborhood conferences of
every kind. And yet it was reserved
for a recent date for somebody to sug-
gest that the school houses be made
social centres; that they be used for
every kind of legitimate conference" 2"
"The back to the farm" movement
will never be reality until the school
house becomes the centre of interest
Singing schools, debating societies,
| musical concerts, phonograph readings
bring neighbors together and to ideas
musical programs-these all tend to
broaden their minds and make their
more liberal.-Anderson Mail.
1t is very gratifying to have so
high authority as Governor Wilson
endorse the position one takes. For
sometime the editor of The Herald and
News has been trying to impress upon
the people of Newberry county that
the one most important thing needed
in the county is to discover the school
house, and when it is discovered, to
make it the centre of the community,
and that is just what Governor Wilson
says in the above quotation. We have
tried to impress the importance Of this
idea, in our visits to schools and IN
our campaign in the county during the
past two months.
The school house should be open the
year round, and should furnish place
in which the people of the community
could assemble and discuss public af-
fairs. as Mr.. Wilson says, and not only
SO, but it should be used by the wo-
men of the community for their social
gatherings, so that the school house
would be ever in the mind of the peo-
pie of the community. AS it is now;
in many of the country places, the
school house, during the greater part
of the year, is closed, so far as the
public is concerned, or if not closed,
is not open in the proper and helpful
sense. "The back to the farm" move
ment will never become reality un-
til the people in the rural districts
discover the school house, and the
countryside will never be what it
ought to be until there are better
schools and better school houses n
the country.