The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1916-02-15

"Just TO make you think, talk and act
for the betterment of your own rural
school,"
Ii country boys and girls are to be
kept on the farm, country life must be
intellectualized and gloritied. The whole
atmosphere of the country schools, the
course of study, the teachers, the books,
has tended 10 glorify city life and be-
little country life.
The course of study of the country
school has been shaped after the course
of study of the city school. The arith-
metic has dealt with stocks and bonds,
profit and loss in merchandising and
commission and brokerage, instead of
fruits and vegetables profit and loss in
feeding cattle, and per cent composition
of various fertilizers.
There Is nowI on the market farm
arithmetic, which contains nearly 1000
problems under such heads as PLANT
Feeding" DAIRY Products Farm Ami
mails" Forests" Farm Accounts" etc.
1t is the business of the country school
to magnify and glorify the everyday life
OF the farm by bringing il into the class
room. All of our schools have been
shaped and directed for the training of
boys for the learned professions. Now
we must face about and so elevate the
business of farming that it will be as
dignifed and as noble as law or medicine
or the ministry.
If boys are brought up to regard farm
ing as worthy of the best brains in the
land, they will stop going to the city.
The best boys want to do the best
things, requiring the greatest intelligence
or the highest skill, and so long as city
life offers them the best things, they will
continue to 60 to the city.
1t is not putting it too strongly to say
that in the country education has often
been held up as means OF getting out of
hard work. The mission of the schools
is TO teach the boys and girls how to get
into hard work on the farm. When the
school begins to function in the country
life, farm life will cease to be the hard
grind it is often pictured Unintelligent,
uninspired work of any kind is drudgery, /
and great deal of the farm work OF the |
present is unintelligent and uninspired
Country people must change the course
OF study in the country school to fit
country life. They must no longer be
satisfied with an abridged or abbreviated
course of study transplanted into the
The one immediate result of teaching
agriculture in the country school is that
the business of farming may be magni-
lied and glorified; that boys may be led
10 regard work by which their fathers
have made living as worthy Of as much
attention at least as the business OF the
broker or the banker or the insurance
agent. Strange that we should consider
Z necessary to teach the farm boy to
'alculate the insurance premium on a
barn and forget all about the calculation
II the amount of fertilizer needed to fill 4
he barn with hay.
AS soon as we speak of teaching agri- ]
ulture in the schools, the teacher and
'atrons hold up their hands and begin to
ry about the overerowded course of {
tudy. The course Of study 10 not over.
rowded from the pupils standpoint.
i have never been in country school
where even the best pupils were busy {
yer half the time when at their seats. c
he course is overcrowded from the 8
eacher's standpoint and. for this, the
My remedy is Capitalization of schools, !
ut 1t is not overcrowded from the pu- !
lis point Of view. The boys and girls !
4 average intelligence could probab bly,
earn more spelling, reading, arithmetic t
nd geography in two hours a day of d
'ell directed motivated study than they d
ow learn in six. e
The most striking thing about any }
ountry school is the amount of idleness :
n the part of the pupils at their desks.
he schools are supposed to train in in.
ustry, but, II desk work is any criterion.
ne country schools are falling in this. {
is not because the children are law .
or because the teacher is Inefficient but s
IMPLY because the children have no mo !
We or real reason of their own in doing !
large part of the desk work assigned I
, them. 1
In life, arithmetic is not an end in it. q
III, but only means TO an end, an aid :
the orderly conduct of merchandising c
banking or farm account When we Il
arm that school is not merely prep
alton for life, but is life, just as rich