The Cordele dispatch. (Cordele, Ga.) 19??-1971, 1916-10-01
OUR COUNTRY SCHOOLS.


help improve the rural schools of the
state. That resolution has not been
forgotten.
1t is announced this week that the
rural schools of Crisp county are to
be opened in October far too late.
There will be ten weeks of the fall
term,-not much more than the length
of the ordinary summer singing school.
And the appalling thing is the custom
Of waiting till the cotton is out and
the farm work is done before the
schools are opened.
Crisp county, in more than one re-
spect, is leading Georgia county in
matters of education for the children.
The city schools of Cordele, however,
will have been running more than
month when the country schools are
thrown open The spring term is meas
ured by weeks, likewise, for the coun-
try boy and girl not by months. The
time cannot be made sufficiently prof.
table by even the best teachers that
ever served a system.
With all it's love of educational
training, with all it's efforts in other
lines, is the county going to lend it's
approval to slackening interest and
non attendance by continuing to main
tain term too short for the boy and
girl to get a good start before the
scholastic year is over?
The annual report of the state SUI
perintendent of schools of Georgia for
the scholas tic year ending last Deem
Der showed that 169,630 children of
school age in Georgia did not attend
school day last year. Many of these
have never enrolled in a school in
their lives. We have our quota of
them and we are helping them to main
tain a shallow appreciation of the
school work when we make the year
too short for them.
The children are not to blame
it's our system. We know better,
every one of us. There isn't head
of white family in Crisp county who
would have to be urged long in mat
| ters of educational training. for the
children of his household. Most Of
them are already taking advantage of
all we are giving them. Our citizen
ship is not secretive, apathetic, or I'M
approachable None of us live in a
past long dead elsewhere. We know
much of the meaning of the progress
sive present and enlarging the useful
ness of our schools among our chill
dren in the rural districts ought to be
easy
Crisp is one of the finest counties in
all Georgia with marked limitation
to the school advantages of the coun
try boy and girl. This is not written
to make Old Lady Know All throw a
fit in this community and that. We
speak in the interest of the country
boy and the country girl.
Somebody ought to be laying plans
FOR improvements. 1t is an absolute
certainty that the number of days to
the credit of the country boy and girl
in school each term is not fifty per
cent of what it ought to be as meas
ured by the attendance of pupils in
the city schools with the nine-month
term.
In other words, the short term and
the poor attendance in the rural
schools are depriving country boys
and girls of over half their birthright
in matters of free school privileges
as compared with city boys and girls.
We are glad city children have the
good school privileged that are theirs.
We wish the city schools were better.
But we are determined to expose this
unjust, objectionable, and un-Ameri-
can discrimination against country
boys and girls. Equality before the
law and equal educational opportuni-
ty have not yet been provided for the
farm boy and farm girl.
If there is one who is inclined to
question our sincerity go to it. We
are not going to forget the boys and
girls who stand most in need of