Clinch Valley news. [volume] (Jeffersonville, Va.) 18??-2019, 1912-11-22

No question confronting educator
today is of more import than how I,
make country life attractive and in
teresting as well as comfortable fol
people who live in rural sections. 1t
all educational meetings in larg,
cities, in conferences of educational
executive boards, in classes OF
graduate students throughout oui
broad land this topic has prominence.
1t is generally conceded that the
educational efforts have rot touched
effectively the home life of country
people-the people WHO are the back
bone and sinew of the nation. The
fact that there has been little i'm
provement in the methods notwith-
standingthe changed conditions has
produced feeling of dissatisfaction,
not only with those who have the
education of the future citizens in
charge. but those who are the re-
cipients of 1T
The articles. (somwehat vituper-
ative to be sure, attacking the in
efficiency of the public in many recent
issues of the widely read periodicals
show in what direction the wind is
blowing There is greater and more
popular demand for courses of study
that will train pupils industrially
inclined in more practical methods.
correlating these courses withliterary
work. Recalling that education is n
preparation for complete living it
must strike us imprcssively that we
are not doing all that we could do for
the preparation of the child for life
of usefulness and activity in his own
community.
We hear the cry high cost of living
Lack of labor! What is the cause of
1t? The migration of people from
rural communities to the ovcrcrowded
cities the abandonment of good
farms and the necessary shortage of
crops. The demand being greater
than the supply. The labor is plenti-
full in cities, but often undesired be-
cause it Is unskilled. 1t is not the
lack of it in cities, it is the pnor
quality. Every year there is great
influx of people into the cities, many
of them wholly unprepared to earn
livelihood--good people and excellent
citizens it is true. Why this desire
to change? 1t is due primarily to the
discomfort of people untrained to
nnnat finn conditions Of lao,
ment, become dissatisfied with the
sordidness and drudgery of their daily
lives and long for something better
and more comfortable, and who can
blame them?
The public school has not catered
to the needs of the country child.
They have adopted and tried to adopt
to their needs the methods of city
system, suited only to the needs of
the city child with the large CONNER
cial and industrial interests. We
have attempted to train the rural
child by the pattern cut for the CITY
pupil, forgetting or over looking the
fact that the school is for the pupil
and the training of his individual
This condition produces the dis
satisfied feeling that leads to desire
to change the habitat for one of less
denial.
The children Of the family long for
greater advantages and opportunities.
They begin to talk about what they
could have; soon the mother begins
to sympathize and to talk of what
some one who has made the change
had acquired-then begins the cease
less Argument for removal, and finally
the father yields. They sell out and 90
to some town ur city. The younger
members of the family readily adopt
themselves to their surroundings, but
how about father and mother? Oh,
the story is an old one and familiar
to us all. More frequently the children
go off one bv one; leave the old
people, who. helpless and unable to
secure competent help are finally
persuaded to leave their homes and
go to live with some married daughter
or son. The abandoned farms in once
prosperous communities are mute
witnesses to unfortunate conditions of
affair. Now, there must be some
remedy for this condition. 1t lies at
the door of the public school, the
hope of the nation. More practical
courses relating directly to the home
life of the people must be introduced
into our curricula. A greater respect
or labor intoxicating the idea that all
work is honorable and there is no such
thing as mental labor.
When the school gives the same
honor and rewards of promotion to
the boy at the work bench and the
girl in the kitchen that it does to the
student in art and music, whose
accomplishments consist frequently in
little daub and little stunning.
when they have classes together in